LEGO Starts Making Bricks From E-Methanol

LEGO has begun manufacturing selected elements using e-methanol - a synthetic fuel produced from captured carbon dioxide and green hydrogen. E-methanol can serve as a chemical feedstock for producing ABS plastic, which is what the vast majority of LEGO bricks are made from. Instead of that carbon coming from freshly extracted oil, it comes from emissions that have been captured before reaching the atmosphere. The bricks themselves are chemically identical - this is a change in where the raw material originates, not what ends up in the box. The announcement covers "selected elements" rather than the full product range, so this is clearly a pilot-scale rollout rather than a wholesale switch. That's not a criticism - scaling any new production process across billions of bricks is genuinely difficult, and getting a portion of output onto alternative feedstocks is a meaningful first step. You won't notice anything different when you open a set. The clutch power, the colour accuracy, the tolerances - none of that changes. But for those of us who care about what we're buying our kids, or what we're stacking on our own shelves, knowing the material chain is gradually shifting feels like progress.

Originally on www.lego.com.