LEGO Sorting and Packaging Session 2
Recycling LEGO – 50,000 Mixed Lego Pieces
Over the past two Lego sorting sessions, we’ve gather over 50,000 mixed pieces of Lego, began the sorting of over 50 sets, and completed over 30 sets.
Our Mission: to sort everything back into their original sets.
On April 16, 2025, Your Footprints Foundation organized our second LEGO Sorting session, but this time at our volunteers’ own high school — Lord Byng Secondary School. This is our way of saying for community, by community.
For our second LEGO Sorting session, we continued our mission of sorting mixed Lego pieces back into their original sets for donation to children in need. What we did differently this time from last time was that we color-coded all the pieces beforehand so student helpers had an easier time finding the ones they needed, greatly improving efficiency.
Our Goal: to finish what we started.
The event spanned for four hours where each volunteer received an instruction manual for a corresponding Lego set and was tasked to find all the pieces of the set from the large pile of Legos. We ultimately found all the pieces to 30 Lego sets, with over 20 more sets that are 70-80% complete.
A little history: how we got here & why we’re doing this.
Renovations on the upper levels of Bourne’s house temporarily forced him and his family to move into their basement. What stood out to him most when he had to reorganize the space was the abundance of idle Lego bricks from his childhood. Since he no longer plays with them, the thought of donating them to other kids who do not have toys to play with came to his mind, and the rest is our story…
Special thanks to Ms. Jessica Barry, our school sponsor teacher, for supervising this event, and to Ms. Svetlana Lambrinoudis for helping organize our event space. Without the help of them, nothing would have been possible.
A word from the founder
Founder & CEO Bourne Yang was interviewed during Your Footprints Foundation’s second Lego sorting session where he briefly elaborates on what the event is about.
View full transcript
Today’s event is a continuation of our previous Lego sorting session, where we gathered Lego pieces that were mixed together and began the process of sorting them back to their original sets. Last time, we tackled a large pile of Lego pieces that were entirely mixed up together, and because of that and because of their miniature nature and how challenging it is to spot them, we couldn’t quite finish all the sets we started. So some sets were around 80% done, others were 70%, there’s a whole range actually. But that is also partly attributable to not having color-coded the Lego pieces beforehand. To make it easier this time, we color-coded everything in advance, so student helpers can go directly to the corresponding color pile to find the pieces they are looking for instead of searching them in the sea of scattered lego pieces. And hopefully, we can complete and finish all the sets we set out to do and donate them to children in need.