Swanson School of Engineering

At the Lego tour today there were many opportunities for innovation that I noticed. One opportunity for innovation in sustainability that stood out to me the most was the way they handle loose pieces that fall on the ground, get separated from their batch, or other sources like incorrectly batched prepacks. I saw lots of these bins full mixed pieces and they said these pieces will go to recycling, however, after hearing how strict and careful they are with tolerances on their bricks to make sure they’re all compatible, I began to think about how recycling would look for them. When we hear recycling that initially sounds like the pieces would be remelted to make new bricks or reused, but with such strict tolerances on their bricks they likely can’t use remelted plastic to make new bricks since that would change the plastic’s properties. When I asked about this they said the bricks are instead chopped up and used in plastic compounds for other applications, but I saw this as an opportunity to instead reuse the bricks rather than down cycling them, as an opportunity to improve sustainability. I think it’d be a good opportunity to sell mixed mystery packs of these pieces or even donate them to schools or kids and keep the plastic as the bricks they were made into.