Lego, the world’s largest toy firm, would require suppliers to set near-term emissions discount targets by 2026, a transfer it says is important to maintain its net-zero targets on observe.
The toymaker has dedicated to reducing its carbon footprint by 37 p.c by 2032 and reaching internet zero by 2050. Near 99 p.c of Lego’s emissions come from Scope 3, which covers the actions of its provide chain.
Lego’s new Provider Sustainability Program, introduced July 3, requires its greatest suppliers (representing about 70 p.c of its total emissions) to share knowledge about emissions generated by the manufacturing of products and providers they promote to Lego, beginning in 2024. They’ll have to share discount targets beginning 2026. Lego declined to supply further particulars.
“Sustainability is a license to function and a requirement of how we do enterprise, together with how we choose our suppliers,” mentioned Carsten Rasmussen, chief operations officer at Lego, in a press release. “Now we have concepts and we’ve a pathway; we can not do it alone.”
Public provider necessities are unusual for toy business
The brand new program builds on an initiative Lego launched in 2014 to measure and handle the environmental affect of its closest companions. As of the corporate’s sustainabilty progress report in December, that initiative included 158 suppliers.
The follow of encouraging suppliers to set emissions reductions targets — or a minimum of for asserting them publicly — is comparatively uncommon exterior the retail sector. Walmart’s Venture Gigaton, introduced in 2017, turned the exemplar for retailers in search of to push emissions cuts, water conservation and waste administration inside their provide chains. That program aimed to chop 1 billion tons of greenhouse gases by 2030; it met that purpose in early 2024.
Corporations in different sectors, particularly these setting science-based emissions reductions targets that embrace Scope 3 pledges, are additionally pushing suppliers to do extra. Pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, for instance, will require 95 p.c of its suppliers (by spend) to have emissions discount targets by fiscal yr 2025. Microsoft is asking its largest provide chain companions to make use of “carbon-free” vitality by the top of the last decade.
“What I’m seeing is a variety of firms are beginning to set or part in necessities, however you’re not seeing bulletins, as a result of they don’t need to promise one thing that they won’t have the ability to ship,” mentioned Anne Clawson, principal at consulting agency Cascade Advisory.
Expectations and provider packages aren’t frequent amongst toymakers. Mattel, the corporate behind Barbie and Fisher Value, hasn’t introduced a Scope 3 goal. “I consider Lego is the primary to articulate provider necessities to cut back,” mentioned Chloe Davison, principal emissions, waste and circularity consulting with one other agency, Glaze Sustainability.
The toy business’s greatest problem: plastic
Lego hasn’t disclosed its emissions numbers for 2023, however for 2022 it reported a complete footprint of about 1.6 million metric tons, up from 1.5 million metric tons in 2021. The business produces an estimated 26 million metric tons of greenhouse gasoline emissions yearly, and it makes use of near 1 p.c of world plastic manufacturing.
Discovering options to plastic is one in all Lego’s highest priorities, though these two agendas — lowering plastics and reducing emissions — don’t all the time align. In September, Lego stepped again from a dedication to make its bricks fully from recycled plastic as a result of switching wouldn’t contribute to emissions reductions.
Thus far, Lego has examined greater than 600 supplies as choices, together with bio-polyethylene, which it makes use of to make botanical parts and Minifigure equipment. In 2023, 18 p.c of the resin it bought for its bricks was made out of renewable or recycled sources which are combined with virgin sources.
