Lego has gone green

apparently. There is a piece in this morning's paper saying that the company is using recycled plastic bottles to make those little building bricks. They claim that you can get ten little bricks out of a one litre PET bottle.

That's good news if it is true. Lego is pretty good.  You can do lots of things with it. It isn't cheap but it is pretty sturdy. It lasts. You can add to it. 

It has grown over the years. When I first knew about it the idea was pretty simple - just bright coloured bricks which could be put together in all sorts of ways. Add a little imagination though and it became much more than that.

Now it is much more sophisticated. My late friend E... was teaching in Papua-New Guinea for some years. She spent a considerable sum of money on "Lego Technic" sets for her physics students. Useful? Oh yes. Those sets were not toys. The students were really learning something from using them.

The Senior Cat has used them too. He made some conjuring apparatus for a professional magician using two of the technical sets. I know other people who have used it for serious purposes too - as well as watched children play with it.

I did not grow up with Lego. I grew up with a set of wooden building blocks that the Senior Cat made for me. My brother and sisters used the same set. When my nephew was born my brother took the set. When my nephew's children were born they used it. It is still in use.  My brother has remade the original box but the blocks are the same blocks we used. Visiting children still play with it.

The Senior Cat made other sets too. When the older of the two boys next door was born our present to him was a set of blocks just like we had. During lock down last year he was, at the age of fourteen, using it to think about the design of something he wanted to make. He plans for any children he might have to play with it too.

The Senior Cat had more than one Meccano set as well. My brother played with that more than I did but we both played with it. We followed the diagrams and the instructions and constructed the cars and the windmills and the ships. 

Then we would go back to the wooden blocks. The blocks were smooth and solid, they could lie on their sides and stand on their ends. They could be stacked and knocked down and sent end to end around the house.

I like Lego in lots of ways. It has great play potential. If it is going green then that is even better.

But the wooden blocks could be anything we wanted them to be.