Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/02/26/legos-new-botanical-collection-is-made-from-plant-based-plastics.html
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OTOH the idea of throwing legos away seems like heresy to me… The entire point is that they’re reusable. After all, it should take quite a while for their clutch power to wear out…
ETA: wait, why is this the first I’m hearing of the roses and tulips sets?
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Thank you, @thomdunn, for this piece and - speaking as a scientist, botanist, ecologist - pointing out the problem with the label ‘bioplastic’.
It actually could be worse than petroleum-based plastic, but I have some small faith in Lego, i.e. I give them the benefit of doubt that they actually did a full life-cycle assessment and came out on a net positive.
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I’m all for looking at alternate ways to manufacture plastics and a company with the gravity of Lego can push the innovation dramatically in a positive direction. The real question is where in our society are plastics a reasonable compromise? Medical devices, certain automotive and machine parts and durable goods like Lego (many of which at this point are on their 3rd+ generation of use) are all reasonable, IMO, but their volume is dwarfed by the pointless single-use plastics that have a production-to-waste stream lifetime of a couple of days or weeks. The more companies like Lego reimagine how our relationship with plastic looks, the better off we’ll be and sooner.
ETA: Not sure how my tone came off, but in short; I agree with you and have faith in Lego that they’ve thoroughly vetted this. IIRC, when I read that they were developing these products, they were as a test-market to see how they would fare before committing to all products being petroleum-free.
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lego using plant-based plastics is not new, but it is fitting to promote it with these two new sets.
that said, i have both of these sets as well as the treehouse one that uses the plant-based plastics and i’ve found these pieces to be softer and less grippy than traditional abs lego. this is especially problematic for the bouquet set because the techniques used to shape flowers rely heavily on mini c-clamps and as a result, the set is floppy and constantly needs adjustment.
initially i thought it was a great idea to have this bouquet set as a whimsical replacement for real flowers, but now i’ve found both situations to be lose-lose. if i buy real flowers they eventually die, or i have a lego set that lives forever, but looks permanently wilted and droopy.
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Where you the one who shared this in a comment previously? Someone tagged me in a post about this here on BBS … but I’m an idiot and couldn’t find who’d shared it with me.
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The only elements that are plant based are the polyethylene pieces which are the softer pieces, the new sugarcane based polyethylene is identical to the oil based one previously used. None of the abs plastic pieces have changed. The polyethylene pieces are mostly all vegetation pieces and some pterodactyl wings
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Yes. I tagged you in @beschizza’s Sonic the Hedgehog Lego topic.
Glad you found it interesting, and doubly so because you didn’t just celebrate it but gave it some environmental thoughts. 
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Yes! Thank you!
Softer pieces, huh? Looks like the Lego Corp is trying to solve the old, “step on a Lego in bare feet at night” problem that has cursed them since their inception.
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