In Philip K. Dick’s story War Game, aliens try to undermine Earth by exporting toys. Through a cunning board game, they successfully convince children that giving up their resources is winning.
Children’s toys have long been recognised as objects which both shape and reflect society. From the militarism of action figures and video games, to the capitalist strategising of Monopoly and Ticket to Ride, what we play with both moulds and mirrors us.
I have been thinking about this recently because Lego, perhaps the world’s most famous toy company, decided to launch what might seem a niche product: a model of a container ship called the Ane Maersk, which Lego calls “a true icon leading the charge for sustainable shipping”.
This collection of 1,513 bricks arrives at an interesting moment for the global shipping industry. And it tells us something about the modern ocean and its difficult relationship with fossil fuels, climate change and shifting political winds.
Ship shape?
Moving products around the world is a dirty business.
Lego bricks moulded in Denmark, Mexico and China will be packed into the same steel shipping containers that the company now sells in miniature. Loaded onto vast ships, they will cross oceans before arriving on shop shelves, some ready to be assembled into smaller versions of the system that carried them there.
The fossil fuels those ships burn account for around 3% of global emissions, contributing to global warming that is damaging ocean ecosystems via rising temperatures, sea levels and acidification.
Under growing pressure, shipping companies are looking at moving things in ways that emit less planet-warming gas. Some are adding sails to vessels; others simply going slower. But most of the focus is on what fuels these ships. Methane, methanol, natural gas, ammonia and electricity are all being tested as alternatives to the heavy fuel oil that powers most of the global fleet.
But emissions from shipping are still rising, and data from last year suggests only 8% of ships use alternative fuels, which are not available everywhere vessels travel.
As companies try to transition, vessels that can run on both traditional “dirty” fuel and a cleaner option are becoming popular. This is what Lego is choosing to recreate.
The real version of the Ane Maersk – the “world’s first large methanol-enabled container vessel” – is owned by Danish shipping firm Maersk. The company is betting heavily on these dual-fuel ships, opting for a fleet that can use methanol or liquefied gas.
But even greener fuels contribute to emissions. Maersk defines “green fuels” as those that reduce life cycle greenhouse gas emissions by at least 65% compared to fossil fuels, although this may be as high as 95% in some fuels. “While green methanol is likely to become the most competitive and scalable pathway to decarbonisation in the short term, Maersk also foresees a multifuel future for the industry which includes liquified bio-methane,” it said in 2024.
This is an industry in flux, still trying to work out exactly what the future looks like.
Electric cars now proliferate on streets across the world, and feature prominently among Lego sets. But afloat it is a different story. Fully electric and lower-emission ships are still a rarity. Dual-fuel is in fashion.
Submarines and trash
Lego has long reflected humanity’s complicated relationship with the sea.
I can still remember the sense of shock I felt when I learned that a Lego deep-sea set came with a shark and a ray, but also a discarded broken bicycle and plastic bottle, included to add realism to the underwater world its miniature explorers were visiting.
The company has sold models of scientific exploration vessels, fishing boats and cargo ships. But it has also sold a model of a Shell oil rig. At a Lego park in Denmark, a model oil rig had new offshore wind turbines added to it. There used to be a brick oil tanker too, since changed to a turbine installation vessel.
Lego’s impact on the ocean can be direct. Millions of pieces that washed off a cargo ship into the English Channel at the end of the last millennium still wash up on European shores today, with a whole project dedicated to tracking them. The robust construction which makes them long-lasting, means they could last anywhere between a 100 and 1,300 years in the ocean.
Lego bricks are made from plastic, a material derived from the same industry that fuels the cargo ships transporting them around the world: oil. Global efforts to curtail the production of new plastic have been drowning in negotiations that make little progress, in part due to blocking manoeuvres by oil-producing countries. And of course, the push to enforce regulations that would clean up shipping through the International Maritime Organisation has been stymied by now familiar protagonists: the “drill baby drill” strand of pro-fossil-fuel thinking combined with classic industrial protectionism.
Lego itself has struggled with these constraints. The myriad plastic bags that once enveloped the toys have been replaced by paper, and some parts are now made from partially recycled or biologically derived plastic. But the company has abandoned efforts to make bricks from recycled plastic, because as Tim Brooks, Lego’s head of sustainability, told the Financial Times in 2023, that would have disrupted manufacturing to the point the company needed to “change everything” in its factories. “After all that, the carbon footprint would have been higher,” he added.
Perhaps in the future, toymakers will produce models of ships that run purely on clean fuels. Perhaps ocean-themed Lego sets will be oil-free, and come with more fish and fewer broken bicycles. Until then, incremental steps – dual-fuel ships and paper bags – are what we have.
The Lego Group declined to comment.
