LEGO Packaging: Do Smaller Boxes Equate to Greener Bottom Line and Environment?

The Green Image

Over the past several years, The LEGO Group has made an effort to be a "green" multinational company.  Investing in large wind turbines was one way they illustrated this desire to become an ecologically friendly company.  Another way was reducing their carbon use and abuse.  One way to do this was to shrink their LEGO box size.  As the company stated in this memo...

LEGO -  The builders of tomorrow expect that we do everything we can to mitigate (reduce the amount of future climate change) our business’ impact on the environment. We acknowledge that our operations have an impact on the environment in areas like climate change, resource use and waste. Yet, it is undisputedly our ambition to protect children’s right to live in a healthy environment, both now and in the future.

According to what our friends at the LEGO Company are putting on their website, they have seriously plans to reduce their ecological footprint.

It has been proven that the accelerated rate of CO2 pollution has a negative impact on the earth’s atmosphere. The continuing industrialization of the modern world is one of the key-factors to this pollution. Whether the pollution is really a hazard to Earth’s atmosphere, I will not go into in-depth.  I do applaud companies like The LEGO Group for trying to go for CO2-neutrality. The people at LEGO have calculated that approximately 15% of the entire Group’s CO2 impact is associated with packing. It seems a logical step that one of TLG’s plans to tackle this problem was to decrease the size of their set boxes.

Slim Boxes

The first line of 'slim' boxes was released in 2013 and by 2015; the entire line available in shops should be replaced. It would bring down the usage of cardboard by up to 4000 tons annually and it will reduce the CO2 impact by around 10% of the packaging process. Smaller boxes would also benefit the retailers as they can put more boxes on their shelves.  Shipping costs will be decreased too so it seems to be a win-win for all. Let’s take a look at some of those slim boxes. I assume that all boxes brought out in 2014 are of the newer ‘slim’ kind and all boxes prior to 2013 are those of the ‘fat’ kind. In order to establish if the boxes have actually become slimmer, my criteria are the volume of the box, the amount of pieces and also very important, the weight of those boxes.

Example 1: Modular Building Series

As first example, I’ll take the Modular Building Series 10224-1 Town Hall has the largest piece count and 10243-1 Parisian Restaurant, the second largest. I also added 10211-1 Grand Emporium. The conclusion here would be that indeed the box size has been decreased. As a note here, I add that there are plenty smaller pieces in the 10243-1 than in the 10224-1 and 101211. That explains the numbers you find when comparing the piece count and weight to the other sets mentioned. It is looking good here. If I take the average volume for 10224-1 and 10211-1, I calculate 29.8dm³. That would make the 10243-1 a whopping 25% smaller.

Example 2: CITY Trains

Another very popular series of sets over the years have been the LEGO City Trains. I left 3677-1 Red Cargo train out of the comparison to spread the production dates. All sets have a similar piece count and all have Power Functions that comes with them. Here the difference is smaller than the MBS example above. We can even see the box size of 60052-1 growing with 2% compared to the 7939-1. Of course, there are 49 pieces more in the latest set so that needs to be taken into account for the City Trains example.

Example 3: DC Comics

One of the more popular series with all the attention from the motion pictures are the DC and Marvell Comics series. I took 3 sets with comparable piece count from the DC Comics line up. While having a larger piece count, the box of 6864-1 does seem to be smaller than the one of 76013-1. The difference is a striking 14% even in the disadvantage of the latter one. Compared to the oldest set of the three with the smallest , the 76013-1 is a comforting 22% smaller.

Example 4: STAR WARS Battle Pack

I assume these are one of the best-selling sets for LEGO apart from any City set. The weight for all battle packs are the same but the piece count for 8014-1 does differ somewhat from the other 2. The best comparison for box size would be the 2 latest editions. So what we see here is that the box of the 2014 set is 12% larger than 7913-1, the set from 2011. I personally think this example is a very important one due to the similar weight, piece count and included booklets.

Example 5: STAR WARS set (Large)

For this example, I thought long and hard of which set to use and the one that came to mind was the AT-AT. Various versions of this behemoth have been brought out over the years and the piece count of all sets is about the same. The 8129-1 version of AT-AT was left out due to the ridiculously oversized box and the non-comparable piece count. The box size of the 2014 model has made great progress compared to the older versions. 75054-1 has 18% less volume than 10178-1 and 54%(!) less than the 4483-1 model. We should note here that the 10178-1 does have Power Functions and those parts do weigh extra and take more room than ordinary pieces.

Example 6: City Police

I was looking for a set to compare from the City theme (apart from the trains) and the one that is most easily comparable is the police station so below you can find the most recent Police HQ sets that have been available. The piece count does fluctuate more strongly than earlier examples. Here the box size of the 2014 model is 9% smaller than the box 7498-1 AND has 71 pieces more. In comparison to the 7744-1, the difference is even bigger at almost 13% but here we have to note that 60047-1 has 99 pieces less than 7744-1.

Analysis

In order to establish how much exactly the boxes have gotten slimmer compared to the fat ones, I decided to take the average of boxes pre-2013 and compare them to the average of the 2014 released boxes. This gave me the following table.

So the first thing we can see is that the piece count for the sets is more or less equal. Then when we take a look at the actual size, it is noticeable that the boxes have actually shrunk 15% so we can say that LEGO's objective has been reached so far...

But...

Not quite. Because there are a few other numbers that need to be looked at. The average weight of a set has gone down 11% or 206 grams. So is this because of the cardboard that LEGO has saved on packaging the set? If we look at a standard box of a medium set like e.g. 75052-1 Mos Isley Cantina we see that the entire box weighs 198 grams (thanks Huskers1236). The box itself has a volume of 9,1 dm³. Per dm³ that means its mass would be around 21,75 grams. If we multiply this by 2.69 we get to 58.5 grams that the boxes should be lighter due to the saved cardboard.

But what happened to the extra 147.5 grams?

During the years, The LEGO Group have refined their construction methods of building bricks to try to squeeze as much bricks as they can out of the ABS-pellets. It is hard to calculate how much exactly the production process contributes of the 2014 sets to be lighter. There is however a more interesting fact that we can see in the tables and that is the pieces/dm³. This went up 16% and that could mean 2 things. Either the machines filling the bags are getting more logical and drop the bricks in a more orderly fashion in the bags, or the pieces used in the newer sets are smaller than the pre-2013 sets. I noticed something when I was sorting the pieces for  10243-1 Parisian Restaurant. There were plenty of small pieces in the set. Now, this is not a bad thing, it means more detail, but most people look at a box and say:

"Wow 2600 pieces. This thing must be huge"

While in fact, the Parisian Restaurant was everything BUT huge. It has the biggest piece count, received a heavier price tag and although it does have very nice detail, I simply felt a bit left in the cold after building the other 'larger' MBS with fewer pieces. Smaller pieces are also cheaper to produce and coincidentally, they take up less space in a box.

Conclusion

I personally find the LEGO claim of reducing box size a bit misleading. Sure, the boxes have shrunk averaged taken and that is a good thing, for the environment, retailers, consumers. However, the sets also did get smaller in my opinion. This is not that noticeable at first sight since the piece count stays about the same, but if you look at the average weight, you just know something is not right.

LEGO boxes have decreased in size  an average of 15%

But they didn't do it by some revolutionary new engineering strategy in packaging. It's a bit sad really to see a company that cares so much about the environment using a 'cunning plan' like this that is more about marketing and perception to fool people.

In the end, it will be the consumer, as always, paying more for these smaller boxes and sets.

That is how I see it after researching this topic. LEGO looking everywhere to maximize profits. Seeing there could be money in making the average LEGO piece in a set smaller and then coming up with a story that it is good for the environment.