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Lego moves to eco-plastic products
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
Already nearly a hundred years, Lego company pleases both children and adults with their gaming products. Lego toys are familiar to everyone, since this company has established production of development kits for any age categories. Today, the well-known brand is entering a new level of development - toys will henceforth be made from eco-friendly plastics made on the basis of sugar cane.
The company said that the first use of environmentally friendly cane plastic has already been established, so the start of sales of eco-designers is planned for the end of this year. To begin with, manufacturers will start making eco-plastic parts with botanical accessories - for example, trees, foliage and shrubs (which is quite indicative).
The management of the company guarantees that, for physical properties, new eco-friendly parts are absolutely inferior to products made from ordinary plastic - they will be as strong and practical. The monomer of the new material is ethylene - a derivative of ethyl alcohol, obtained as a result of fermentation processes during the processing of sugar cane. Such a material is structurally identical to all known polyethylene. It is not decomposed and can be recycled. There is one more positive point: the technological production of new eco-plastic is accompanied by a minimum emission of greenhouse substances.
As the company promises, by 2030 absolutely all toys and parts, as well as the original packaging will be produced only from environmentally friendly and safe material. Lego-group has already allocated more than $ 165 million for research and the creation of strong and reliable bioplastics.
The basic capacities of the company's production facilities are located in Denmark, Mexico, China and the Czech Republic. The main factory is the production facility in the Danish city of Billund: only in it more than 20 billion plastic cubes are produced annually, for which it is necessary to use not less than 60 tons of plastic daily.
According to the World Watch Institute, which was provided in 2015, approximately 4% of the total annual use of petroleum products goes to the production of plastics. And the same amount of oil is used to provide all the necessary processes in production. Certainly, plastic is quite a practical material, and it can be used in many ways: it is not heavy, it is well maintained, it has a relatively small cost price. To date, almost everything is made of plastic, and not just toys for children, despite the fact that scientists have repeatedly proved the harm of this material - both for health and for nature in general.
According to representatives of the company Lego, they care about people and the environment, so they are not going to save.
Source of information - The Verge (www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070454/lego-bricks-sustainable-plastic-toys)