First, some good news: Yesterday, thanks to the 1,975 people who signed up for a launch notification for Rolling Realms, Stonemaier Games donated $1975 to the International Tree Foundation.
Second, I’m really inspired by how far Andrew Navarro of Earthborne Games is willing to go to create environmentally sustainable tabletop games. So recently I’ve had a number of in-depth conversations with our manufacturer, Panda, to get clarity on what we’re doing right and what we can do better while still meeting our primary goal of bringing joy to tabletops worldwide.
To aid this process and to track our progress over time (this will not happen overnight), I created a chart listing 13 categories of eco-friendly goals and whether or not each of our 12 games meet those goals.
The left side of the chart lists goals and methods for making games more eco-friendly. Green means we’ve accomplished that goal for the corresponding game (e.g., Rolling Realms doesn’t have a plastic insert), yellow means the game partially meets the goal (i.e., some cardboard is made from recycled materials), red means we aren’t meeting the goal (e.g., Pendulum uses plastic tokens instead of wood), and N/A means that the category simply doesn’t apply to the game.
There are details below the chart, but overall you can see that we’re not doing a good job at creating environmentally sustainable games–there’s a lot of red and yellow here. But there’s also plenty of room for improvement and new information to emerge, and I’ll be updating this chart on this page of our website in the future.
Details
For years, my focus has been on reducing the disposable elements of our games (e.g., shrinkwrap). After all, when you buy Wingspan, you’re not recycling the plastic insert (at least, the data shows that most people keep the Wingspan inserts). However, there is an increased environmental impact on using certain materials and components over others.
- We’ve been working with Panda for a while to find viable plastic bags that biodegrade, and they are now being used for all of our games. However, those games haven’t entered circulation yet, and I’m guessing the process will take time to fully implement–we’re checking every sample copy for them. Hence why I noted on the chart that we’re failing in that category.
- Technically, Charterstone–our legacy worker-placement game–is not a 1x-use game, as I designed it specifically to be replayable after the 12-game campaign. However, it does include a number of sticker cards that serve no purpose after you’re done with them, so I felt the game belonged in the 1x-use category.
- Panda is looking into exactly how much of the cardboard in our games is made from recycled materials. The greyboard they use for punchboards, boxes, mats, boards, and cartons is made from “a certain percentage” of recycled material, but they’re digging into what that percentage is and if it can be 100%.
- I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the primary cardstock we use in all of our games–ivorycore–is made from an FSC source. That’s Forest Stewardship Council. It means the trees used to make ivorycore are harvested in a sustainable manner.
- I was also happy to learn that Panda has been using soy-based inks since the beginning (opposed to petrol-based inks).
- The final surprise was that, “The Shenzhen power grid uses a mix of hydroelectric, nuclear, and coal power,” as I had associated most of China’s power with coal. I don’t know what the percentage is, but I’m glad it’s a mix and not just all coal.
- Originally there was a 14th category on this chart for “no spot-UV,” as I had heard that type of printing was bad for the environment (only 1 of our games uses spot UV). However, I dug deeper into whether or not spot UV is actually bad, and the results were mixed. This article says they contain carcinogens and that they don’t decompose in landfills. This article refutes the claim about carcinogens, and this article indicates that spot UV may actually be better for the environment because it releases fewer volatile organic compounds. If you have definitive information on this topic, please let me know in the comments.
I closely examined each of our games for this list, but if I accidentally missed something, please let me know so I can fix it.
Next Steps
I really appreciate Panda for helping me compile this information and for helping me (and other publishers) work towards a more environmentally friendly future. There were also some very helpful sources for a variety of other information, including T. Caires at HABA Games and Jona on YouTube. I don’t know if we’ll ever accomplish everything on this list–particularly the last 2 categories–but we’ll try our best.
Some actions we’re initiating now with Panda’s assistance are as follows:
- As noted above, when plastic bags are necessary for storage purposes, we’re only using biodegradable plastic.
- Only use recycled cardboard and/or FSC material for cardboard components in our products (whichever makes more sense for each component). This includes reprints of existing products.
- For any of our existing games that use wooden tokens, I would like to use FSC material for those tokens. I would also like to test repurposed wood tokens (cubes and meeples).
- For any new products that require tokens and meeples, we will use wood–specifically, either FSC material or repurposed wood (which we will soon test)–not plastic. Eventually I would like to get to the point where the only plastic that appears in our games is minimally used for miniatures, acrylic dice, and bakelite tokens.
- We’re going to test a wet-pressed pulp cardboard version of the Wingspan card tray and our standard square plastic containers (opposed to vacuformed plastic).
- We’re testing recycled paper wrapping (instead of shrinkwrap) for decks of cards, the exterior of games, and perhaps even pallet wrapping. The paper strips you see in some games come with a myriad of issues–cards can fall out of them and become damaged, and the strips themselves can easily damage any of the cards they contain. Our top priority is delivering our games to you in mint condition.
- We’re looking into eco-friendly alternatives for bubble wrap (which Panda uses to send us samples and whenever they prepack games for fulfillment).
This is absolutely a work in progress, and I want to learn, grow, and improve on an ongoing basis. I welcome your thoughts and feedback in the comments below.
***
Also read: Exploring an Alternate Future of Manufacturing and Wood vs Plastic: The Facts About Custom Tokens
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84 Comments on “Are Our Games Eco-Friendly? (Part 1)”
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hi, do you have any advice how to prototype thermoform plastic inserts for the game? Nobody seems to be doing the prototyping nor design for low volume productions
The way we do it is that we send the specs to Panda, and Panda creates a prototype for us to test and adjust. Usually we go through a few samples before we select the final version.
Thanks for sharing about your efforts to produce games with more ecofriendly components. I’m curious how the experiments with wet-pressed pulp cardboard have gone.
They’ve gone pretty well! See part 3 of this series for an update on that. :)
[…] read Part 1 and Part […]
[…] and so far it’s led to some important insights and changes (see related articles here and here). It’s not an overnight process, but I’m continuing to pursue it, and […]
[…] months ago, I posted an article posing the question: Are our games–as in, Stonemaier […]
PS But please do insist that all (even ‘permanent use’ plastic material has the recycling code on it. Without that, we can’t recycle it at all.
Hi,
Been enjoying Wingspan – definitely eco-friendly! Though I’m a little worried about the very edible looking eggs, that are also a choking risk for babies…
Well done for making things eco-friendly. Instead of using shrinkwrap plastic, have you looked at cellophane? Should be made from sustainably harvested wood, and labelled “compostable/burnable (in a heater)” it’s pretty green.
Though I usually prefer wood/paper over plastic, there are some multiple use things plastic is best for. We use ziploc bags many times, until eventually recycled (or at least put in the recycling bag), and I think the clear plastic boxes in Wingspan are fine.
By and large, I think board gaming is a fairly eco-friendly pass-time, involving little travel. I read somewhere that fishing uses huge amounts of petrol inn the UK (to get to fishing spots), and many other activities require dedicated equipment and travel – even walking, skiing, biking etc often involve a car…
cheers
Bill
Thanks Bill! I’ll look into cellophane.
It’s great that you’re looking into this stuff for your company Jamey! I really admire that 👍
One thing I wanted to mention though, is that I learned in recent years that “biodegradable” plastic is just another mine field of its own problems, unfortunately.
You can google problems with biodegradable/compostable plastics and find lots of info but I found an article that’s quite good :
https://oceana.org/blog/recycling-myth-month-plant-based-bioplastics-are-not-green-some-think
The gist is, it’s merely substituting regular plastic with another flawed single-use material.
Here in Canada, we CAN’T recycle plastic if it’s biodegradable, but there’s no other facility where we can take it, and it’s not compostable in our backyard compost either. So horrifyingly we have to just throw it in the TRASH! At least with regular plastic we can take it to our local recycling depot.
They told us the same at the depot as what I read in this article, I’ll quote it below:
“They [biopolymers] typically require the searing heat of an industrial composting facility to fully decompose. In many U.S. cities, these facilities do not exist – and placing them in the recycling bin isn’t the solution, either.
When these materials end up in the same sorting stream as regular plastics, they can do more harm than good by contaminating petroleum-based plastics like PET (the kind of plastic used in most beverage bottles). Once that happens, the entire load of recycling will likely be landfilled.”….. Yikes!
Just wanted you to be aware of this info after I read that you’re trying to be more environmentally friendly… informed decisions and all that. 👍
This is great to know, Sarah–thank you so much. I think my main takeaway from many of these discussions is just as the article says: We need to use less plastic in general, particularly plastic that will be disposed as soon as a game is opened. We’ve already reduced the number of bags included in many of our games, and we’ll continue to do that.
Now This!
Awesome article and please please please don’t just make it a flash in the pan. Keep at it.
Thanks! It really isn’t a flash in the pan–I’ve been talking to Panda for years about other options for shrinkwrap and plastic bags. These changes will take time to get right, but we’ll keep at it.
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/17/apple-belkin-environmental-impact-packaging/ I was surprised to see how much plastic wrap apples iphones required!
Here’s an interesting BGG blog post (by Alexandre Santos) for further reading on this subject:
https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/122136/sustainable-gaming
Jamey
I read most of your posts and learned so much from you as you openly shared your experience, failures, and steps to improve. I never commented, but this post about sustainability touched me, and from my point, it is your best post.
Because you have been an influencer in the board game Industrie for year’s and I admire that you take action to make your products sustainable and, more so, show others that it is important to focus and make changes. You do so knowing it will cost you more money and extra effort and the risk that quality could be compromised and perceived as not as good from a customer phoebe point.
As a designer kickstarting my first game and working two years to a get product created without plastic bags, with cotton, no plastic and every meeple or cube in wood, sourced with FSC paper and cardboard and if possible recycled material, I know that is massive and there are not 100% sustainer solutions as you mentioned.
I am currently in the process of designing and calculate pulp inserts, and I see this is a price increase to thermoformed or injected plastic inserts of 20% or more per insert.
Let me close with a personal note to say Thank you for what you did for me as a first-time creator and for many board gamers, creators, publishers, distributors with all the games you designed and published and the knowledge you shared.
Without your blog, I would nkt be able to launch Terraternity October 5th in that kind of quality and a confident inhave now. Don’t get me wrong I have a lot or respect for what is in front of me but same time I got lot of answers, tools and hints which makes me feel ready. Yes there is still a funding goal to reach and things can go wrong – but with your help and the work done the chances are good to get funded.
Jamey keep up the unbelievable work and I hope we find rime for a chat or I meet you one one of the reopened conventions to talk about transformational game ideas and sustainability
Udo
creative designer
and sustainability
Nerd
Thanks Udo! This is a very nice note, and I appreciate it. I also think it’s wonderful that you’re pursuing such environmentally sustainable solutions. I’m eager to see the pulp insert samples that Panda provides for us.
Good luck with the final weeks of preparation for the Terraternity launch!
Will new components be available in upgrade packs for earlier editions of games that have plastic components that will be phased out?
I’d like to get wooden Pendulum and Tapestry components and am intrigued by the possibility of the cardboard bird tray!
Cody: It’s actually for that reason that we aren’t changing the materials for games that already exist. For example, Tapestry reprints will still have plastic cubes.
I appreciate a game that is well taken care of so that it lasts longer and can be passed on more times in case I decide to let it go. Thats also eco-friendly production. Stonemaier Games has allways had a high benchmark when it comes to this, and I would hope that will continue while ramping up the greenwashing. Less plastic could lead to more tear.
I received Wingspan two days ago for my birthday and I was shocked by the amount of plastic in the game. Is it really necessary? 15 Ziploc bags?? Are people so averse to rubber bands for cards, or taking two minutes to sort out tokens?
Jonathan: We only put 2 plastic bags in Wingspan; the rest are to contain various components after their produced so they can all make their way into the box for final assembly. Though 15 seems very high even for that–I’ll talk to Panda about it now.
Jamey: I can confirm this. My wife and I bought Wingspan last week from a local retailer and we had 4x of the plastic boxes and multiple baggies of varying sizes. A few notes about storing:
1. We found the 4x plastic boxes are confusing. There weren’t enough to separate and store the food or action cubes in different boxes (would need 5x) and it didn’t make sense to store the dice or eggs in them. As such, these boxes have gone unused.
2. We stored eggs in one bag, all the food in another, dice in their own medium bag, and each set of decision cubes in their own little bag. All said and done we still have 7 or 8 extra baggies in the box, which seemed a bit excessive to us.
3. Shrink wrap is fun to open but bad for the environment. Have you considered maybe closing your games with a flap of paper that extends beyond the lip of the lid and glues to the bottom? Like how they used to seal puzzles back in the day? I know it gives a bit of a rougher edge to the box, but worth the sacrifice IMO.
Anyhow, we’ve enjoyed Wingspan a lot and picked up the Oceana expansion yesterday. Can’t wait for the next expansion to come out.
P.S. I’d love to hear any recommendations on other Stonemaier games that run really well at 2 player.
1. Take a look at the side of the box for a chart that shows that 2 of the plastic containers store all eggs and 2 of the plastic containers store all food (mixed together).
2. I agree, there are too many bags, most of which are there because the various components come from different facilities. We’re working on reducing them.
3. I’m not familiar with that method of sealing a box. The method I’m the most interested in is wrapping the box in paper instead of shrinkwrap so the box is still protected and moisture-free in transit. We’re explore that option, as paper is easily recyclable.
4. All Stonemaier Games are designed and tested to run really well at all player counts, especially 2 players. If you enjoy the engine-building aspect of Wingspan, you are likely to also enjoy that element of Viticulture, Scythe, and Tapestry.
Thanks, I’ll take a look! Appreciate the recommendations.
Thanks for the transparency and keep up the good work.
I was excited about the Earthborne Game localized publishing not just because of the environmental benefits, but because it meant not doing business in a nation committing genocide on it’s Uighur population. Great to have a score card on environment, but what about a score card on human rights. I know Panda doesn’t bear direct responsibility, but it’s like doing business with Germany in 1939 or 1940 while knowing the Holocaust was happening.
You raise a good point, David, but the way I think about it, I work with people, not with countries. Panda is a Canadian company with their main facility in China, and they treat their employees very well. Every nation is guilty of terrible things on an ongoing basis–it’s the people within those nations we choose to work with that defines who we are.
Great post Jamey!!
I’ve been asking Panda about eco-friendly alternatives for a while now and this post has some info I wasn’t aware but I’m happy to know.
Another thing our backers have said is that transparent plastic inserts are easier to recycle than colored ones (black being the worst) so this is something we are exploring.
That’s very interesting to learn, William! I didn’t know that.
Thanks for writing this article. I bet just asking these questions will result in Panda offering more environment-friendly alternatives and those who read it will consider what changes they can make to improve on their sustainability as well (including me).
Thanks for your initiative, Jamey!
My impression is that below the label sustainability there are plenty of nuances that make some decisions much more complicated than what they appear to be. For instance, if we all switched plastic for tote bags the environmental impact would be massive due to the amount of water and resources needed to produce one tote bag in comparison to the now very efficient production of plastic bags. There are tons of elements to be assessed and balanced and if we want to take sustainability seriously, so perhaps the best option is to hire a company offering those assessments rather than to do those inhouse (again, if the goal is to take all those miriad of elements into account).
As to concrete proposals, I have read many times that there are people who dispose of the boxes of expansions. Would it be an option to arrange some collection of those boes at boardgame stores, so they can be reused? I guess the cost will be substantial, but perhaps someone can think about a nice way to actually reutilize those already printed and intact boxes (this would make sense if production is decentralized and boxes don’t need to travel back to China to be re-filled).
Thanks again for taking sustainability in mind. Keep up the great work!
Fernando: Thanks for your comment, and I agree that something can be done better regarding expansion boxes, particularly those that are highly likely to be disposed.
I’m seriously wondering why people are all up in arms about plastic components and special inks and energy, but simultaneously don’t seem to have a problem with the deforestation required to provide enough paper and cardboard.
Make sure components can be recycled and don’t overcomplicate things.,
Trees can be regrown in decades, and most is sourced from plantations.
Oil required for traditional plastics takes 10s of million of years to form. Plastic also doesn’t degrade in the environment and is only somewhat recyclable into lesser quality products, a finite number of times.
Glad to see that the effort is being made. I backed Earthborne Rangers and hope that their actions inspire others as well!
Oh, Drive Thru Reviews (Joel Eddy) and RDTN (Marty) had a youtube video on this with a sustainability scientist (Derric Pennington) in April of this year:
https://youtu.be/8ryjwyK–Pc
Thanks Luke!
Looks good! Thank you for all your work, Jamey!
Thanks! :)
Most of the time I keep a game’s insert up to the point where I am trying to consolidate expansions into a single box. So for WingSpan I ditched the insert from the original box, all of the expansion boxes, and some duplicate storage items such as the lovely extra card trays. Throwing out the extra card trays really hurt because they are such a useful component on the table. Anything that can be done to mark the required plastics for proper recycling will also help us on the consumer end to make better decisions on which bin to put inserts and components when we are eliminating duplicates.
That’s an interesting point, Sara, and I must admit I struggle with it a bit, because we don’t put components in our games just for people to dispose of them (other than the shrinkwrap, which I really want to get rid of). But I see your point that regardless of our intent when it comes to what components we want people to use, sometimes people are going to get rid of certain elements that aren’t entirely intuitive to recycle, and better labeling could help with that.
For eliminating plastic inserts, one game that impressed me with it really functional cardboard insert is Fuji Koro Deluxe. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a really functional insert like an e-Raptor or similar plywood insert but made out of cardboard.
It may be worth considering at least for deluxe versions of games, assuming it would be quite expensive as it would have to be put together by hand at the factory. But it could be made with recycled cardboard I would think and also has the bonus of being lighter than plywood inserts.
Thanks for sharing that, Richard! I’ll check it out.
Good point! Game Brewer has been using Meeplemaker cardboard inserts for their deluxe kickstarter projects since Fuji Koro. I do love the functionality of the gametrayz inserts in Gugong, but for me personally, the tradeoff in sustainability is worth it.
Many games include a bunch of ziplock bags for storage. I appreciate the intention, but in all honesty I have a box full of spare ziplock bags of many sizes and shapes. I can’t recall right now but … I wonder if games from Stonemaier have those ziplock bags? Would it be possible to remove them?
I also have a box of bags from games! My Wingspan European expansion box is nearly completely full.
To be clear there are primarily not bags from Wingspan or SM games. I just love the art on the European expansion so this was a way to save it with a purpose.
MK: Our games typically involve only as many bags as we think people we need for storage, but I’m happy to decrease that number based on customer feedback.
I would certainly recommend reducing if not completely removing. I know that you have a good mentality when you set the number of bags….but everyone sorts differently. For example, in wingspan someone may want to store each food type separately. We put them all in one bag. Maybe a different person wants to make a bag per player?
Since it is so hard to say how many bags are needed (and often people have spares) I would strongly recommend reducing down to zero :)
Personally, I think it’s great that SM ships with bags and not with a stingy amount of bags. Please keep doing that Jamey! The bio-degradable option sounds awesome.
Thanks for being so open and honest about this Jamie, I am invested in trying to make my game as eco friendly as possible and to see methods summarised here is really useful.
As it’s only a small game the only real plastic source is the shrink-wrap, so will look into the paper alternatives, do you know if anyone has used this option in the industry yet?
So far I’m only aware of companies using little paper strips to contain cards, but they’re problematic–they can easily damage the cards, and cards can break free of them. I’m not aware of any company wrapping an entire deck of cards in paper instead of plastic (though it’s certainly possible someone is doing it)!
How about paper or lightweight cardstock boxes, like regular decks of cards come in?
Kateri: Tuckboxes are potentially an option, though I think they’re assembled by hand, so they require significantly more labor than a machine that automatically takes a loose deck of cards and wraps it. For the solution to be sustainable, I think it needs to be automated.
Chicago express comes with two of those boxes to keep the monopoly-like money and shares
Oh yes, there are lots of games with tuckboxes. It’s just pretty rare for them to be preassembled, particularly as a way of keeping a deck of cards together (instead of shrinkwrap). In fact, I would bet if you opened a deck of cards, you’d find at the very least that there’s shrinkwrap on the outside of the tuckbox and probably on the inside around the cards too.
This is fantastic to see an industry leader starting to think and write on this subject – especially so transparently. Have you considered designing some games using shared pieces? Many Stonemaier products use the same or similar pieces – stars for example – as resources. What about selling a single set of pieces that may be used throughout your product line for a number of different games? Then individual “spotlight” pieces would be sold for a given game. I realize there are some difficulties here as some people would still want the whole game in the box and not have to use a set to pull from, so it might be logistically more difficult to sell some with and some without. However, ways to reduce the total cubic space of the contents of the games might go handily with trying to increase the environmentally friendlier packaging and delivery?
Bill: It’s an interesting idea, and I’ve thought about it (though more from an economic standpoint)–one of the best ways we can protect the environment is to simply make less stuff, so if we’re making fewer tokens, that helps.
Plastic inserts are a personal bane of mine. Expansions generally make them useless and they are usually not stamped as to the plastic(s) used. I can recycle via Terracycle [PSA here] but need to cut them up first. It seems some cellulose based product would be better – exactly what I do not know. As for shrink wrap there are two outfits in the US that is making corn (?) based material as a substitute. Slip covers, full or partial, that are simply decoration should be ditched as they add NOTHING to a game – just more resource consumption. I could also pass on spot UV; really adds nothing. I am playing a game not the cover!
Plastic bags are enormously useful – and ones removed are recycled from a game are recycled; even that is too much. One annoyance it getting a game with a bunch of Zips for components that are unrelated to the size needed…
Ship packaging: zero reason for plastic anything. There are degradable peanuts, just plain old brown paper and, sometimes just cardboard. Rarely have seen anything damaged.
Some of the changes – including ones you are looking at – will undoubtedly raise prices but we have that choice or choke on our games and their by products. It is also a matter of scale – as more friendly products are used the price will drop.
Lastly, encourage your customers to recycle and not just dump items – say you upgrade from cardboard chits to metal coins – don’t just bin the cardboard.
That’s great to know about biodegradable shrinkwrap! I’ll look into that. Our fulfillment centers are also exploring alternatives to bubblewrap–they’re aware that other options exist, but they all significantly slow down the packing process and add to the cost (which is no excuse, but it’s why they’re hesitant to make a big move yet).
There is far more to sustainability than just material choices. Application. amounts, lifetimes, sources, etc., all come into the equation of assessing the sustainability of one product relative to another. I do this type of assessment everyday, and often the perceived sustainable product is not the really sustainable product.
Feel free to provide some specific examples for me to dig into (particularly for “application,” as I talk about sources above) so you can make a positive impact on this chart. :)
Maybe plastic bags for tokens could be replaced by cotton bags? More damage resistant and also improves overall look and feel.
There are alternatives to plastic bags, though you’re looking at a monumental increase in price if you’re going from plastic (or biodegradable plastic) to cotton.
I have a hunch that cotton bags may have worse lifecycle ghg emissions than small plastic bags. If more fossil fuels are used in the growing, harvesting, transporting, and processing of cotton than goes into producing those small plastic bags, then you could be spending more money for something that’s actually worse from a climate perspective. It takes very little petroleum to make those tiny bags. It takes a lot to make fertilizer and run a tractor.
This is super cool to see. As a consumer…I really don’t think this way but maybe should put more thought into it.
Thank you for the update :)
Hi Jamey,
I welcome your commitment to this change. With all the extreme weather we have been having globally (likely due to climate change) and all the plastic in our oceans, it is so important that we all start taking steps to heal our planet. My family and I went Vegan in the past year and we are slowly changing how we consume things little by little.
I am looking forward to seeing you achieve your goals, as well as more great games.
Tony
That’s great Tony! While it was only partially for environmental reasons, I went vegetarian a few years ago and have stayed that way ever since. :)
I think Tom Vasel has recently said he has gotten to the point where most of the time he’d rather just use plastic bags over an insert at all. I feel similar if the insert isn’t useful or doesn’t help easily set up the game. I think most of Stonemaier Games’s games have some solid inserts/trays that I wouldn’t ever get rid of, but there are a few I am indifferent towards. Do you think you’d ever get rid of all inserts? Are plastic inserts/trays worse or better for the environment compared to a number of plastic bags? This is an interesting chart and I look forward to seeing what changes can be made! 🙂
That’s a great question, and given the amount of plastic used for trays vs bags, I would guess that trays are worse for the environment. I’m also very curious about wet-pressed cardboard inserts. They can’t be as complex as plastic, but they can still be useful.
Heya,
Watch it with biodegradable plastic. You have variants that if they get wet or moist they will start to dissolve.
We spent many months looking for the right type of biodegradable plastic, and while I didn’t test any version that matches what you’re saying, the version we ended up with definitely does not dissolve. Rather, over several years these types of plastic bags will simply lose some of their integrity. If they end up in a landfill, unlike other plastic, they will eventually biodegrade.
Good to hear!
The better strategy would be to use no such bags at all. We shouldn’t focus only on making things biodegradable, but primarily, to produce less trash at all. Also, we can’t forget to that board game is similar to book. You buy it, use it for long period of time, then you give it away to somebody, or library, or just sell it. Seeing boardgame in trash is highly unlikely.
Instead of wrapping cards in plastic, putting tokens into small bags, etc. I definitely would like to see board game with cardboard insert, like the one used to store eggs. Otherwise, cards could wrapped up in paper, tokens in material bags, etc. Anything punchable should be punched in factory so leftovers could be used once again. The things that end up in trash bin should be made friendly to our environment and each game should made as low as possible. Game itself should be designed to be manufactured with ecology in mind and to last forever.
I agree, no bags is better than biodegradable bags. Though, along those lines, our plastic bags aren’t meant to be disposed–as you said, the components we include in our games (including bags) are designed to be used, not thrown away or recycled.
The punch-out cardboard is an interesting point. I know it’s currently part of the culture of boardgames, that when you first open a game you need to punch out the cardboard, but this means that the scraps may or may not be recycled (it depends on the recycling alternatives available to the consumer and what the consumer does with the cardboard).
If the pieces already came pre-punched-out, then it’s easier for the factory to ensure that all the scraps get properly recycled.
I think the point there is what ‘over several years’ means. I have many games on my shelves which are more than 10 years old. I certainly don’t want the bags to be ‘losing integrity’ over that timescale. I think that the point made by another poster below is key – games are meant to be kept, used and passed on for years or decades. It’s like Lego. Yes Lego is made of plastic which doesn’t easily degrade, but that is a feature, not a bug. It allows it to be handed down from generation to generation. It’s always better when something can be reused rather than replaced. In that case it’s more important to reduce the environmental impact of making the material. In the case of board games, things which are designed to protect the longevity of other components, such as token bags, card sleeves, card boxes, etc. should be designed to be durable and stable for decades, not to degrade. But I’m totally alongside the idea of removing single use plastics such as shrink-wrap, which are designed to be ripped off and thrown away.
I hear that. Though anything will lose integrity over time, especially if it’s lovingly used, right? The cards in my copy of Clank aren’t as nice as they day I opened the game, and I’m fine with that. At Stonemaier Games, we’re here to offer replacement parts over the lifetime of the game.
Here in New Zealand, we can recycle soft plastics like bubble wrap and single-use shopping bags but they discourage biodegradable plastics. The reason they give is that it breaks down too quickly in their manufacturing process (they make fenceposts out of the recycled plastic, among other things).
The other problem with biodegradable plastics is while, yes, they break down quicker than conventional plastics, they are still plastics. So you end up with small fragments of plastics more capable of entering our waterways and food chains.
I really like the idea of wet-pressed cardboard inserts and containers, paper wrap for cards and (sustainable) wood replacing plastics for cubes and tokens. Thanks for your ongoing efforts on this, Jamey!
Thank you for sharing, Chieh. In the US, technically there are a few recycling centers that accept bubble wrap and plastic bags, but they’re very rare (and if you try to run those types of soft plastics through machines that are processing cardboard, they clog up those machines).
I’m definitely very curious myself about the wet-pressed inserts and containers!
The collection for these soft plastics are run completely separate to our household recycling for precisely the reason you stated above.
I guess the point I was trying to make was, are biodegradable plastic baggies really the better choice?
I think no bags is better than biodegradable bags, to be sure.