Lego ends 50-year link with Shell

Danish toy giant Lego is ending its co-promotion contract with Shell. The move follows a three-month campaign led by Greenpeace which saw one million people sign a petition calling on the plastic bricks brand to stop promoting Shell because of its plans to drill for oil in the Arctic. 

In its statement, Lego said the dispute was between Greenpeace and Shell: "The Lego brand, and everyone who enjoys creative play, should never have become part of Greenpeace’s dispute with Shell."

Ian Duff, Arctic campaigner at Greenpeace, commented: “This is a major blow to Shell. It desperately needs partners like Lego to help give it respectability and repair the major brand damage it suffered after its last Arctic misadventure. Lego’s withdrawal from a 50-year relationship with Shell clearly shows that strategy will not work.”

“The tide is turning for these fossil fuel dinosaurs that see the melting Arctic as ripe for exploitation rather than protection. The message should be clear; your outdated, climate wrecking practices are no longer socially acceptable, and you need to keep away from the Arctic or face being ostracised by society.”

Lego is the latest in a line of leading global companies to walk away from a relationship with the fossil fuel industry. In late 2012 Waitrose announced it has put its partnership with Shell on ice and in the last month Microsoft, Google and Facebook all made commitments to end their support for ALEC, a controversial lobby group that campaigns against climate change legislation. And most recently, the Rockefeller Foundation announced it will begin pulling its investments in the fossil fuel industry.