Celebrating 3 years of zero waste to landfill

A factory worker pushes a trash can on the factory floor.

BILLUND, DENMARK, 24 June 2025: At the LEGO Group, we are committed to minimising our impact on the environment. That means continuing to reduce the impact of LEGO® production and our use of resources. We set targets for our carbon emissions, energy use, water usage and waste generation, as part of our goal called ‘Zero Impact in Operations.’ This aims to decouple our impact from business growth.

One of our areas of focus is reducing and managing the waste created in our factories. We are constantly looking for ways to avoid waste and to ensure disposal methods are as sustainable as possible.

Focus on waste prevention, reduction, reuse and recycling

We aim to reduce the waste that goes to incineration or landfill across all our factories. In 2024, 96% of the waste generated during production of LEGO bricks was reused, recycled or recovered. For the last three years, and despite a minor increase, we have remained within a ‘zero waste to landfill’ threshold, which is commonly interpreted as less than 1% of waste generated going to landfill. We have also successfully decreased the amount of waste going to incineration, without energy recovery, every year since 2022.

Our main waste categories are plastic from moulding operations, wood pallets and cardboard, which are used to package and transport goods to and from our factories, and can all be reused, recycled or recovered.

Unique approaches to waste reduction

In factories in Denmark, China and Mexico, we reduced waste by more than 160 tons in 2024 by implementing digital solutions to determine which raw materials can be recirculated and applying continuous improvement tools to increase efficiency.

In our factory in Czechia, employees found ways to close a loop for the cardboard cores that packaging materials are delivered in, which helped reduce waste by 39 tons in 2024. Working closely with a supplier, they established a system to return the cores to the supplier, instead of treating them as waste and recycling them.

Across all LEGO factories, element waste is re-used to make new LEGO bricks. Scraps that cannot be used are recycled into other industries, such as car manufacturing or electronic devices.

Building a more sustainable future for children

Our ‘Zero Impact in Operations’ ambition means that we are always looking for new ways to improve and minimise waste. We rely on our employees’ creativity and innovative ideas, as well as close collaboration with trusted third-party suppliers to make this happen.

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