Two months ago, I posted an article posing the question: Are our games–as in, Stonemaier products–eco-friendly?
Of course, that wasn’t the first time I’ve asked myself that question. My parents raised me to treat nature with respect and take climate change seriously, and the environmental impact of producing over 4 million units comprised of cardboard, wood, and plastic has increasingly weighed on me.
I’ve occasionally poked our manufacturer, Panda, about pursuing more eco-friendly options over the years. Panda has been responsive and helpful, but this summer–inspired by folks like Andrew of Earthborne Games, T. Caires of HABA Games, Jona on YouTube, environmentalist Derric, and others in the Green Board Games Facebook group, I decided it was time to take an in-depth look at how we’re doing at Stonemaier Games and work with urgency towards a more environmentally sustainable approach to board game publishing.
Even working with urgency, though, I’ve found that making large-scale changes takes time. We have made a little progress in the last 2 months, though (details below the chart). The previous version of the chart is archived here.
Updates
- Biodegradable Plastic Bags: All of our new and currently reprinting products have replaced all of their plastic bags with biodegradable bags. These bags are fully functional–they’re not going to disintegrate or get all goopy. Their core features is simply that unlike other plastic bags, they won’t still be here after hundreds of years. This has been a surprisingly expensive change, and as a result it’s been a good opportunity for me to examine how many plastic bags we really need in our products–I’ve reduced the quantity in many of them without interfering with storage viability.
- Recycled Cardboard Boards, Mats, Boxes, Tiles, and Inserts: Games typically have two types of cardboard: cards (a single material that’s printed and cut) and coated cardboard (components with multiple layers that are combined after printing on one of those layers). The latter, we’ve found, is mostly recycled cardboard–around 75%.
- Recycled or FSC Material for Cards: This category replaces the “repurposed wood” category, as I just don’t think that’s viable from our research. However, cards are a big part of most games, so I think they deserve their own category. The good news here is that Panda’s greyboard uses 100% recycled material and their ivorycore (a fancier material that we usually use) is made from FSC certified materials.
Questions and Other Categories
- Cardboard Pulp Inserts: I was really excited about the prospect of cardboard pulp inserts (instead of plastic), as 9 of our 12 games have plastic inserts. After researching them, my excitement is somewhat diminished by the cost (both the mold itself and the per-unit cost), the design/detail limitations, and the inability to secure a loose insert with a tight cardboard top. It’s probably the last category that is the most concerning for me–what’s the point of investing in a nice insert if the components can’t stay in it? We’ll need to consider this on a case-by-case basis.
- Recycled Plastic Inserts: Not every game needs an insert, but for games that do, I’m talking to Panda about using recycled or plant-based plastics. Panda currently doesn’t use those options for quality and health concerns, but they’ve told me that they’re “actively looking into the use of bioplastics such as PLA or starch-based films, but will take a few months to get there.” I’ll revisit that in the next update.
No Exterior Shrinkwrap: Inspired by games like Tim Eisner’s Canopy, I asked Panda about the prospect of gift-wrapping games instead of using shrinkwrap. Currently there’s no automation at Panda for this, making it very labor intensive–personally, I don’t feel good about asking Panda’s workers to gift wrap tens of thousands of games by hand. However, Panda is looking into machinery that can handle the gift wrapping for games of various sizes, and they’re optimistic about the prospects.- No Interior Shrinkwrap: On the surface, this seems easier than the exterior, but it’s actually much more complicated! Panda has extensively testing ways to make paper bands work instead of shrinkwrap, and a myriad of issues have arisen: If the deck of cards is too big, the cards curl after a few weeks. If they’re in a black plastic insert, the edges of the cards turn black. But if they’re not in an insert, the cards can slide out of the packaging and get damaged. The front and back cards are particularly vulnerable, and you can add blank cards to protect them. We’ve managed to make these bands work for one specific upcoming expansion, and beyond that we’re looking into wider bands, tuckboxes, and gift-wrapping.
- Wood Sources: We’ve had some really interesting discussions with Panda and in the Green Board Games group about FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) regarding wood sources. Panda is trying to find a sustainable, reliable, ethical, and not-too-distant source for wood, but this is a work in progress. They currently get most of their wood from New Zealand.
- Biodegradable Bubble Wrap: I approved the samples Panda sent me, and we will use this type of bubble wrap whenever we prepackage games in China for preorder fulfillment. Remember, though, that it’s exceptionally rare that you can put bubble wrap in the recycling bin–if you do, it will clog the machines that process recyclable materials!
Other Notes
If you’re a publisher and would like to use this chart format on your website, I’ve uploaded the InDesign source files here. If you do, feel free to post a link in the comments below.
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. If you have any examples of publishers implementing creative, eco-friendly measures, I’d love to hear about them!
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Also read: Exploring an Alternate Future of Manufacturing and Wood vs Plastic: The Facts About Custom Tokens
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20 Comments on “Are Our Games Eco-Friendly? (Part 2)”
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Just a small chuckle comment… My ancient copy of Kill Dr. Lucky (from Cheapass Games) used junk mail cut into strips as the card deck wrap holders.
[…] Also read Part 1 and Part 2. […]
Jamey, I applaud your efforts to make your products in an environmentally sustainable/eco-friendly way. It seems like a lot of the changes you would like to make would require significant capital investment and procedural changes on the part of your preferred manufacturer, Panda. Additionally, Panda is located in China I believe.
Have you pursued options for finding manufacturers stateside that may be interested in serving the boardgame/puzzle industry stateside? I think the overall impact from preventing transporting materials to China and the final product from China would be more than some of the significant changes noted (not to mention the significantly more stringent environmental regulations in the US). You may even be able to implement some of the noted changes from the onset of manufacturing if the company is just getting into the boardgame business.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this because I do believe there may be some lower hanging fruit to pursue that would have a pretty significant environmental impact by itself before exploring innovative product design.
Thanks!
Nick: Panda is actually a Canadian company, but their primary facility is in China.
Absolutely, for years we’ve looked into options in the US–it’s been a conversation in the game industry for a long time now. The tricky thing is that a lot of the little components featured in games simply aren’t made in the US. Even US manufacturers like Delano and the Ludocraft US facility import quite a few components from China and simply assemble them here.
It’ll take baby steps to get this to work. We’re working with Panda on the first of those steps, which is for them to offer assembly of components in the US for things produced in China.
You can learn more about this topic via this great chat here: https://youtu.be/fTxeO7hr4Cw
I recently filled out my Pledge Manager for the B-Movie expansion to Roll Camera! by Mal Rempen. They offered a shipping option that made me think of the efforts you’ve been making: given that the base game has an awesome insert that holds all existing content quite nicely, there is an option to have the expansion shipped in a recyclable box.
I like this option, as there are quite a few beautiful boxes (and all the associated stuffing) that I’ve promptly cast out, upon storing all the goodies in a previous box. I’d like to see more companies offer these type of solutions for game content, as many expansions would be a lot friendlier to the whole process I’d they didn’t require the “on the store shelf” full packaging approach. Thought it was neat and wanted to share.
I really like that, Aaron, and I appreciate you sharing it. I mentioned something related on today’s blog post as it relates to expansions (potentially using sturdy envelopes instead of boxes if there’s only printed content inside).
Thanks for keeping us up-to-date and for your efforts regarding eco-friendliness. More publishers should do this. In particular, the big ones could have a huge impact as they’re printing in such big numbers.
Thank you so much for putting in the time and effort into even considering eco-friendly changes that Stonemaier games can make!
This is something that no one can ignore really. I haven’t had any of my games published yet, but I think that being environmentally conscious has altered how I design my games.
During the prototyping stage I have in the past gone through so much paper and card making things that end up not being used or just for a couple of playtests before they are discarded (ie thrown away). Now I reuse almost all of my prototype stuff. Pencil and rubber have become my best friends and quite a lot of my home made prototype cards (either paper or actual card) have gone through several games and don’t look great but they do the job they need to do.
It has also affected my design outlook too. I am a huge fan a massive sprawling games but have more recently begun to love smaller games and hopefully more environmentally friendly. My newest project is a small game with a tiny board the size of 4 poker cards (which might go anyway), 12 cards, 3 meeples and about 15 tokens. Even though I’m far away from this being finished I’m already now thinking about how not to use cardboard and maybe the tokens could be bamboo – I have a rally nice bamboo mahjong set and the tiles feel amazing. Bamboo is environmentally friendly as far as I know, versatile, nice to hold and nice to use.
I do despair at the one use and useless plastics being used in general, I always remember at christam (having lots of new games as presents) the mountain of shrink wrap. Not to even mention the often times pointless inserts to make small games bigger.
Another area that makes me a little uneasy are legacy games. I really like the idea, but the wastefulness that inherently goes with them really isn’t great.
There are lots of things that I will be considering for my games and I think lots of other game designers/developers/manufactures will be too hopefully.
Just want To say thank you for putting in the time and effort to become eco friendly👍🏼Awesome
After playing a game of Barrage last night and then reading this, I’m just thinking about how you could lower the quality of your products by providing far fewer resource tokens than are needed for a 4-player game and make the various board components out of cardstock instead of cardboard.
More seriously, I think this is great and I wold pay a little bit more for a game that used large amounts of recycled materials. I hear that bamboo is more renewable than pine although any wood is better for the planet than plastics. I look forward to seeing one of your game boxes with the text: “This game is made from 100% recycled paper products and uses no plastics… and the factory doesn’t run on coal power!”
Bamboo is definitely a magical tree in terms of sustainability. We haven’t been able to make any components using it yet, but I’m hoping to do so at some point. And yeah, it would be awesome to not use coal power (and provide a lot of jobs to those making and maintaining sustainable energy solutions).
Something I’ve been thinking about is an eco friendlier way of receiving expansions, bought directly from your online store. My house is littered with empty expansion boxes from Aeon’s End and Marvel Legendary, because the components end up in the base game. I will be buying Tuscany soon, and I would be happy to buy it sans the box, and receive the components in a bag.
I don’t know what that would mean for manufacture/storage at your end, but I thought I would mention it.
Shane: I’ve thought about that a lot too. The problem with bags is that they’re almost always plastic, and plastic bags can rarely be recycled (unlike boxes). Plus, they don’t protect the components.
However, we do have a solution of sorts that we’re exploring with Wingspan due to other circumstances: We’re going to be selling the next Wingspansion inside of the Nesting Box (the big box/organizer) for those who want both of those products. That’ll save us from packaging the Wingspansion at all.
This is awesome – and shows how complex this can be, even with the best intensions. Is this mostly about future games? Or are you also looking into changing components of reprints?
And, for expansions, if you are changing the composition of cards or other items, is there a risk that they won’t integrate seamlessly with older printings which used different materials?
“Is this mostly about future games? Or are you also looking into changing components of reprints?”
It’s a mix of the two, though I don’t think we’d change any component of an existing game that would create expansion incompatibilities (like if we changed the plastic tokens in an existing game to plastic).
Jamey, I really appreciate your thoughtful approach to so many different topics in the game design and publishing field, and this is certainly one of them!
My biggest open question about the chart is that the graphic design makes it seem like all of those dots are of equal weight! But, it’s almost certainly the case that each row or dot is worth a significantly different value.
I’m guessing you print way more copies of Wingspan than Charterstone at this point, so the Wingspan column should be worth more enviro-VPs than the Charterstone column.
Also, it could be the case that the bottom row is worth something like 1000 enviro-VPs and the top row is worth only 1 enviro-VP. I don’t know enough about the environmental impacts of boardgame production to give specific relative weights, but I’m sure they’re not all equal. I tried contacting some professors of environmental science to do an analysis of the Arydia production process, and I haven’t had any luck yet. If anyone reading this knows someone who can reputably analyze the environmental impacts of the full production process, I’d love to be in touch with them.
All that said, 1 VP is still better than 0, AND I think writing about this now gets the word out, and starts to make a ripple effect of positive impact (with appropriate credit to the sources you mentioned: Andrew Earthborne Games, Tiffany of HABA Games, Jona on YouTube, environmentalist Derric, and others in the Green Board Games Facebook group).
So, I’m not suggesting that you should wait to write about this until you know more about the relative weights. But I do think knowing the relative weights is a vitally important piece of this puzzle, to actually make a positive difference. If I spend a lot of time, energy, and money trying to turn some of those dots from red to green, I’d really want that dot to be worth 100+ VPs and not just 1-2 VPs. And also the amount of resources I’d be willing to spend to turn a given dot green presumably depends on its value.
Ira: I like your gamification of this chart, and I agree that there are many different weights to these categories. I’m currently just taking a general approach (yes, mix, no), but I welcome other publishers to modify the chart as they wish!
Very interesting article as always!
Just beware with PLA. It’s not that environmental friendly, and definitely not biodegradable.
https://www.seagoinggreen.org/blog/pla-biodegradable-plastics-too-good-to-be-true
Thank you!