COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Toymaker Lego said on Wednesday it was on track to replace the oil-based plastic used in its iconic bricks with recycled plastic by 2032.

Billions of the brand’s plastic bricks are sold worldwide each year, and Lego has already tested more than 600 different materials to replace petroleum-based plastic by 2030, but without much success.

Now, the Danish group wants to gradually reduce oil with certified renewable resin, the raw plastic used to make the bricks, by increasing its spending on the material by 70% to encourage manufacturers to increase production.

This means a “significant increase in the cost of producing a Lego brick,” Niels Christiansen told Reuters.

The company, Christiansen adds, is on track to ensure that more than half of the resin it will need in 2026 is certified using the mass balance method – a verifiable way of tracing sustainable materials throughout the supply chain – up from 30% in the first half of 2024.

The market for recycled or renewable plastics is not yet fully developed, partly because most of the available raw materials are used to produce subsidized biodiesel, which is blended into transportation fuels.

According to Neste, the world’s largest producer of renewable raw materials, fossil-based plastic costs about half to a third the price of sustainable options.

“We sense more activity and willingness to invest in this area today than a year ago,” Niels Christiansen said, without giving details on suppliers, prices or volumes.

Competitor Hasbro has started including plant-based or recycled materials in some toys, but has not set firm targets for plastic use.

Mattel plans to use only recycled, recyclable or bio-based plastic in all of its products by 2030.

(Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; with contributions by Miral Fahmy; by Mara Vîlcu; editing by Kate Entringer)

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