LEGO is celebrating 5 years of success for its flagship sustainability initiative Replay which allows consumers to ship used and unwanted LEGO bricks back to the company for redistribution to others.
In a pair of lovely celebrations in Boston and Richmond, giant LEGO birthday cakes bearing the number ‘5’ were decorated by children who then got to take sets made of donated LEGO bricks home with them.
GNN first reported on Replay’s launch in 2019, and five years on there have been 1,229,072 lbs. of LEGO bricks donated to the program which has distributed them to almost 400,000 children over the last five years.
That’s over 300 million individual bricks filling 190,000 distributed Replay sets, all being reused and re-loved rather than thrown in a landfill.
Most people don’t want to give away, or certainly throw out, their LEGO collection, according to Tim Brooks, the Environmental Responsibility Vice President at the LEGO Group.
“The vast majority hand them down to their children or grandchildren. But others have asked us for a safe way to dispose of or to donate their bricks. With Replay, they have an easy option that’s both sustainable and socially impactful,” he said in 2019 when Replay first launched.
That option has been routinely availed of, and coupled with existing initiatives to use recycled plastic to manufacture bricks—with the increase in cost coming out of company profits, LEGO is becoming one of the most sustainable toy companies on Earth.
“The LEGO® Replay program highlights the lasting power and durability of the LEGO brick and ensures it stays ‘in play’ through donations across the country,” said Skip Kodak, Americas Regional President at the LEGO Group.
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“This free and easy-to-use program gives LEGO bricks renewed life, and we’re proud that over the past five years, Replay has reached nearly 400,000 kids, increasing their access to learning through play. It’s been a delight to engage more kids and educators with Replay through this anniversary celebration.”
The donation process is simple: collect any loose LEGO bricks, sets, or elements, place them in a cardboard box, and visit lego.com/replay to print out a free UPS shipping label. The package will be sent to the LEGO Replay facility, where each brick will be sorted, inspected by hand, and given a rigorous cleaning. Donated bricks will then be distributed to kids throughout the U.S. by nonprofit partners.
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