LEGO to Establish Sustainable Materials Research Center

LEGO Group, the beloved building-block maker, has announced that it will invest $150 million in researching and developing sustainable materials for its products and packaging.

LEGO in 2012 first announced its goal of finding and substituting sustainable alternatives to its current raw materials by 2030. Now the company will move forward with this initiative by establishing a Sustainable Materials Centre at its new headquarters in Billund, Denmark, which is scheduled to open in 2016. This center is expected to have satellite locations worldwide. LEGO is also planning to staff up by hiring more than 100 materials specialists.

“We have already taken important steps to reduce our carbon footprint and leave a positive impact on the planet by reducing the packaging size, by introducing FSC-certified packaging, and through our investment in an offshore wind farm,” Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO and president of the LEGO Group, says in a statement. “Now we are accelerating our focus on materials.”