How Lego Achieved the Reusable Plastic Brick

Bricks also require that it not only maintain its shape and retain the shape but also does so for all generations of the game, because Brooks says such tools move and change shape over time. Standard Lego bricks are tested using temperature and humidity, butter, and even fake saliva to ensure their integrity over the past several years.

With his new PET brick, however, Lego has broken down. At least. “We now have to work a little harder to control them and how we can make colored bricks,” says Brooks. “When we do this, we go through the form and see the amount of ABS bricks instead of PET.”

The secret is that of the 3,500 different colors that Lego makes, a 2 x 4 brick is one of the most popular. If the company replaces the program with added plastic, this could significantly affect Lego’s natural goal of using reliable products in its sales by 2030. “We have what we call ‘high speed,'” says Brooks. and 2 x 4, we know very well everyone set will have 1 x 1 drop. This is the most common brick we make. “

“ABS is incredibly strong. Very dry, very accurate, very hard. PET is strong, compact, and precise, which is why we should use a switch with PET. It’s different here. We are using another type of PET and the additional ‘secret sauce’ we have a patent for. That’s why you’re looking at PET which we are modifying to act like ABS. “

Gregg Beckham from the Energy Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US Department of Energy, who, in 2018 together with John McGeehan of Portsmouth University, developed an enzyme that imagaya PET, is impressed by Lego’s progress.

“ABS is a wonderful thing. It’s very difficult, because you can change the amount of A the B and S. And depending on how you make it there is a lot of ABS plastic you can make. We do it every day, “says Beckham.” But PET, it’s hard to make in the same way as ABS as you would find in Lego bricks. This is the unique problem of polymer science, of course. This is very interesting. “

As for the reason why it took so many decades to make plastic to get here, Beckham says that while it would be nice if we could shake a magic wand and just make it happen, the task is often tricky. “These are very important scientific and technical issues that need to be addressed in order to fit in with the same products and materials that come from recycled plastic or recycled plastic,” he says. “In the case of ABS bricks, they do not come from recycled or recycled plastics at the end of life. This can solve all these problems at once.”

There is another benefit to the new PET bricks: They have a 70% lower carbon compared to the virgin ABS brick.

But, interestingly, with the development of new eco-based plastics, real environmental benefits can come from developing ways to recycle things we can’t. Things like ABS. “Today’s laboratory research is considering the use of advanced recycling methods that can damage polymers, long-chain molecules, in their homes,” says Beckham. “Then purify them and put them back into the same plastic as the virgin plastic or to open the loops and turn them into something more valuable.”