How To Recycle LEGO

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LEGO is one of the best known toys around the world.

The Lego Group began manufacturing the iconic LEGO bricks in 1949 by Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen in Bilund Denmark. His family still own the company, and they have factories in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, and China.

Although they were not the first company to create interlocking toy bricks, by 1958 they had perfected the locking mechanism still used on the modern day brick, and a toy legend was born.

Named the 4th best-selling children’s toy of all time in 2023, LEGO is one of Europe's biggest companies, and is the largest toy manufacturer in the world by sales. It is estimated that the LEGO Company produces approximately 36 billion bricks per year.

That is a lot of plastic.

Now one of the bywords of the LEGO organisation is quality, and they intend their bricks to be used and reused over and over again. If your kids have LEGO, there’s a good chance that they have some that’s been passed down from older siblings, cousins, parents or friends. Maybe you’ve picked up some second-hand LEGO in a charity shop or car boot sale.

How To Recycle LEGO Bricks

So if you have some LEGO bricks sitting forlornly in the back of a cupboard, what can you do with them?

If you have playable bricks:

Pass them onto other family members or friends.
Offer them on a local sales group such as on Facebook.
Offer them via Freecycle, Freegle or similar.
Sell them online on eBay or similar.
Donate them to a charity shop.

LEGO have now begun a campaign to encourage us to keep bricks in play by passing them on when we have finished with them.

But what can you do with broken LEGO? Now it is quite hard to break a LEGO in regular use, but certainly an adult could crush one under a heavy shoe. The company do not have any suggestions on what to do with broken LEGO, presumably because they don’t want to admit that the bricks could be broken.

In the UK they cannot be included in household recycling collections and should be taken to a local recycling centre that accepts toys for recycling. Otherwise for the time being they would have to be disposed of in the household waste bin.

Can You Clean Up Dirty LEGO?

If your LEGO bricks are just rather grubby and grimy rather than actually broken, they can be cleaned by washing them by hand in hot soapy water and using a soft brush to clean the crevices. An old toothbrush would be perfect for this,

It is also said that you can also wash them in the washing machine, although I’ve never tried this so cannot vouch for it. Add them to a cool wash (below 40C) inside a wash bag or pillowcase, and I would probably only add a small amount at a time.

LEGO do not recommend putting your LEGO bricks in the dishwasher due to the high temperature that they would be subjected to, which could damage the bricks.

LEGO Sustainability Aims

Meanwhile LEGO have been working for many years to improve the sustainability of all their products.

LEGO is made from ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) plastic, which means that it is derived from natural gas and petroleum - so fossil fuels.

The company have been experimenting with using many different types of plastics to make the bricks. At time of writing, LEGO have not found a material that offers the same properties of strength, ease of manufacture and consistent accuracy of dimensions that ABS does.

You can find their most recent statement on sustainability here. Their current progress is focussed on sustainability of packaging materials.

How To Recycle LEGO

How To Recycle LEGO Bricks

Can You Clean Up Dirty LEGO?

LEGO Sustainability Aims

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