Kickstart: Building Lego

Lego's $1 billion U.S. manufacturing site is now officially under construction.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, state economic development executives and local officials joined Lego executives April 13 for a groundbreaking event for the Lego plant in Chester, Va. When completed, the 1.7 million-square-foot molding, processing and packing plant is expected to employ more than 1,700 people and be the Danish toymaker's first U.S. manufacturing plant since it ended operations in Connecticut in 2006.

When it opens, it will supplement production for the U.S. toy demand that had been filled from a site in Monterrey, Mexico.

"The U.S. is a very important market for the Lego Group. We've grown rapidly during the past four years, and we expect to see this demand continue as we increase availability across the country and attract new builders to Lego play," Chief Operating Officer Carsten Rasmussen told Plastics News when the company first announced its plans in 2022.

Lego expects to begin limited operations in 2024 in a temporary facility with completion of the full plant in 2025, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership said in a news release.

It's tough getting older, especially when you're trying to age with style, so why settle for boring reading glasses from a drugstore? That seems to be the angle for Minneapolis-based Eyebobs, which terms its acrylic glasses as being for "every idiosyncratic soul on planet Earth."

Apparently, it's a business plan with potential since the company was just acquired by private equity company Blue Point Capital Partners. Blue Point, based in Cleveland, purchased Eyebobs to join with its recently acquired portfolio company Europe Eyewear of Vernon Hills, Ill., our sister paper Crain's Cleveland Business writes.

With Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and (soon) millennials aging into the reading glasses demographic, Eyebobs aims to appeal to customers with frames branded under names such as "Eh-Symmetrical," "In Cahoots," "Wackadoodle" and "Sexy Professor."

"It is our fundamental belief that 'ordinary' shouldn't go anywhere near your face," the company says on its website.

Meanwhile, two other eyewear trendsetters — Warby Parker and children's glasses maker Roshambo Eyewear — are noting their work in making their products more sustainable.

In its 2022 Impact Report, Warby Parker says it distributed 13 million pairs of glasses through its "buy a pair, give a pair" donation program, including 100,000 given to people impacted by the war in Ukraine.

In addition, the company launched a demonstration lens recycling program in partnership with Eastman Chemical Co. in the first quarter of 2022. The program uses chemical recycling to recover the plastics from discarded demonstration lenses. Warby Parker says it saved the equivalent of 20,000 pounds of single-use plastics from the landfill through the process.

Roshambo says it made more than 30,000 pairs of sunglasses frames from 100 percent recycled material, or about 750 pounds of material. It works with an Italian manufacturer on the program and aims to eventually make all of its frames out of recycled materials.