LEGO paper bags rolling out in more sets in Europe and Asia

The LEGO Group says its paper bags are now rolling out in more sets in Europe and Asia, with the Americas set to follow in 2024.

The transition to paper bags from plastic bags inside LEGO sets has been a long time coming, with plans for the switch initially announced all the way back in September 2020. The move is part of the LEGO Group’s wider sustainability goal of making all its packaging sustainable by 2025. At the moment, the company says 93% of its ‘packaging by weight’ is made from recyclable materials such as paper, cardboard and ‘paper-based materials’.

These paper bags fall into the latter category, given they’re composed of 95% paper and 5% plastic. The thin coating of plastic is intended to prevent LEGO pieces perforating the bag, and also helps to glue the bags together. The LEGO Group says they’re ‘widely recyclable’ in countries with the necessary infrastructure, a claim apparently verified by independent laboratories in the US, Canada and the EU.

Factories in Europe and Asia are currently making the transition from traditional plastic bags to paper-based bags, and the LEGO Group says the roll-out will continue into 2024. That’s also when factories in the Americas will start to move away from plastic bags.

“The transition to paper-based bags is a significant milestone in the LEGO Group’s sustainable materials journey,” said Tim Brooks, VP of Environmental Responsibility at the LEGO Group. “Phasing out single-use plastic from our products has been very important to us as this material is rarely recycled, unlike paper-based bags.

“We committed to doing this three years ago and have faced a number of technical challenges to find a bag that would not compromise the high standards LEGO fans expect from us. It’s been a true team effort to arrive at this exciting moment and we’re very proud to see the paper-based bag rollout gain real momentum.”

The LEGO Group tested approximately 70 different materials in its mission to design a paper bag that would withstand production and shipping, and the first results are now rolling out of factories in Hungary, the Czech Republic and China. The company has not said specifically which sets will include paper bags, nor if we can expect to see them as early as the January 2024 releases.

“More than 350 LEGO colleagues came together to solve this important challenge and what they have achieved is incredible,” Tim added. “It has not been easy to balance the importance of the building experience, the quality of the product and the engineering and production challenges with the urgent need to be more sustainable. We look forward to hearing what our fans think when they open their first paper-based pre-pack bag.”

The LEGO Group has already moved away from plastic to cardboard with its Collectible Minifigures, starting with 71039 Marvel Series 2 – a change that has proved controversial among the community. It’s moved the goalposts on its wider paper bags in sets several times over the past couple of years, but this is the firmest assurance yet that the switch is now underway at last.

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