In recent years Lego has made strides to try and mitigate the impact of its plastic brick empire on the planet, from attempts at making its bricks more environmentally friendly, to slowly bringing in paper bags over plastic ones in its sets. But an apparent attempt to test the waters on another eco-friendly project has sent the company scrambling like it’s just stepped on one of its own blocks.
Earlier this week Lego released a customer survey through its “Insider” rewards program that asked people how they would feel about a move to strictly digital instructions in its sets (Lego has offered the ability to access a digital copy of a set’s instructions via QR codes printed in the physical instructions for a while now). The eight-question survey indicated that Lego was considering not just the move, but also methods to incentivize customers to buy exclusively paperless sets as it transitioned. “We want to play our part in building a sustainable future for generations to come. One way we can do this is to reduce our paper usage by switching to digital building instructions,” the survey read in part. “It’s a small change that can make a big difference—and we’d love to know how you feel about it.”
And apparently Lego fans really let them know, because just a day later Lego pulled the survey entirely, following blowback online and from Lego blogs. Now, the company has released a new statement to try and assure Lego fans that it is no longer considering this particular eco-friendly initiative.
“We would like to reassure fans that we have no plans to stop using physical building instructions in our products,” the statement (via The Brick Fan) reads. “We conducted this survey to understand more about our adult fans’ preferences regarding our products and building experience, something we do regularly across a range of topics.”
Beyond the accessibility issues an all-digital move could make—requiring some kind of mandatory online connection to actually build your Lego set, even if only to initially access digital instructions, kind of flies in the face of the appeal of such an offline product—this wouldn’t be the first time Lego’s struggled to adapt eco-friendly initiatives, although not for a lack of trying. The company previously ditched long-in-the-works plans last year to move to using renewable plastics in its bricks, citing that the carbon cost of manufacturing would be more damaging than its current output, only to recently re-announce plans to cut the amount of oil used in its plastics by 2032.
Some of the initiatives that Lego has managed to adopt have been controversial among fans, including the decision to phase out foil packaging on the company’s collectible minifigures series with paper and cardboard boxes in 2022, making it more difficult for fans to try and feel out which randomly packaged figure they were getting. It might take a while for Lego to come back around to the idea of digital-only instructions after this initial blowback, but it’s clear that they’re going to keep trying to do what they can to reduce its climate footprint in the near future.
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