Yesterday, preorders opened for our two most eco-friendly games to date, the Between Two Cities Essential Edition and Smitten. Shipping starts next week.
This news follows last month’s announcement that the newest reprint of Wingspan will feature high-quality sugarcane pulp trays and inserts instead of plastic, wooden eggs, compostable plastic bags, and all sustainably forested sources for wood and cardboard.
I know we’re far from the only company trying to make our games more environmentally friendly while still creating special experiences for the tabletop; another recent example is the game Daybreak (on Backerkit now), which features 0 plastic and 0 textiles.
Here’s what we did with our new games to increase their eco-friendliness:
- Between Two Cities Essential Edition: This edition has a cardboard insert instead of plastic, a few biodegradable bags, recycled cardboard components (tiles and cards), only wood tokens, and perhaps most importantly, no disposable shrinkwrap. Instead, the outer box is sealed with 4 clear stickers, which we were able to do without risking box damage upon removal of the stickers because we’re using a box with glossy lamination.
- Smitten: Smitten was designed from the ground up as an eco-friendly game. It’s a microgame–only 18 cards and a single-page rulebook–and we packaged the cards using a paper band. Instead of a box, the game comes in a paper envelope. And that’s everything! No shrinkwrap or plastic of any kind.
We produced both games before Panda finalized their FSC certification, but both use recycled cardboard.
I’ve updated our sustainability chart to reflect these changes. If you want to support these types of eco-friendly endeavors, Between Two Cities Essential Edition is available for preorder now, and Smitten is available for free with any Stonemaier webstore order–any product, not just B2CEE–through October 1.
Learn more about our environmental sustainability efforts (and failures) in the articles on this page. Which clever eco-friendly innovations have you seen recently in tabletop game products?
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21 Comments on “Our Two Most Eco-Friendly Games to Date”
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Jamey, I have really, really enjoyed your YouTube content and I was so so so excited to see this update in my Google news feed! How wonderful that you are using your skills/strengths in this way! Your summary chart above with all the dots is amazing!
I, too, would love to support local manufacturing!
I think your company is a leader in quality for the industry, and it is great to see you push boundaries in other areas too! Lovely to see you demonstrating what can be done!
Bravo!!!!
Thanks Jill! We’re working on it, one small step at a time. :)
It has been most informative to follow you on this journey. I am quite interested in the bottom row of regional manufacture, and how it might have been used with Smitten. An 18 card game seems like a perfect choice to be regionally produced. Was keeping it a surprise, a factor in getting it mass produced in 1 place?
Shane: You’re right that Smitten probably could have been produced in the US, and maybe we’ll try a print run here in the future. The flip side is that a small, simple game like Smitten takes up very little space for freight shipping, unlike larger games that aren’t possible to make in the US.
It has been interesting to follow this journey and certanly biodegradable bags and similar changes have been well-received by customers. I was wondering how you determine whether a change actually has a positive impact, and how you quantify the impact? For example, how do you calculate whether sugarcane pulp trays have a smaller environmental foot print compared to plastic trays? Or wooden eggs vs plastic eggs? Biodegradable bags vs plastic bags? Do you look at overall emissions from production to disposal? Compare transportation costs and emissions for producing and transporting raw materials? Or what criteria do you use?
Part of it is the research we and our partners have done. Part of it is relying on organizations like FSC who specialize in this sort of thing. And part of it is common sense.
I mean in the 80s and 90s it was “common sense” to save the trees and stop using paper on favor of plastics which we were told were recyclable. More recently, palm oil plantations are so lucrative in poorer countries that they are irreversibly destroying native rainforests.
I know from some of your other posts that you understand the value of quantifiable measurements. It would be cool if you could say something like “For a 6000 print run of game X, with changes x, y, and z, we expect from raw materials to disposal life cycle it will reduce carbon emissions by X kg” or some other metric. Alternatively, is any of your research available publicly for anyone who wants to look into this kind of thing further?
Or perhaps there are other benefits that are simply impossible to quantify. Think of how many people read your post and follow your blog and over time may take these attitudes with them to their own workplaces and homes where they can make a difference.
Sure, read through my other articles on this topic for links to various sources. Read the many excellent threads in the Green Board Games Facebook group. Talk to experts in this field. And along the way, question what you hear with more research to see if it’s just one person’s take or a wider consensus. That’s what we’ve done, and I’ve provided our findings and our actions in these blog post so others can learn from them. If you want more information than I’ve provided, do the work and the research and share what you find.
Out of curiosity, have you quantified through accepted practices that these new approaches are more sustainable…or are you just assuming they are because it makes sense?
These changes are the result of a huge amount of research corroborated by multiple sources at multiple levels. You can see this by reading the other articles linked on this page: https://stonemaiergames.com/about/eco-friendliness/
Thanks for your commitment
I would like to create a folding gameboard with 2 slots die cut in like handles so a kid could carry the game like a briefcase. All the accessory pieces would be cardboard inside, including a drawstring bag that you would attach to the handle after unpacking. The quick-start rules would be written on the border of the gameboard (inside) and more info and rules written on the backside (outside) of the board. The front would have the cover art from the box, as there would be no box ! Awww a girl can dream ! Congrats to SM for leading the way !
Oooh, Smitten sounds like a game that I could play with my wife since it’s cooperative! 2 player games can create a lot of tension, which isn’t always great for a married couple. Thanks!
Thanks Seth!
Any chance the Wingspan nesting box (or Asia expansion) will be for sale on your website before October 1 in order to qualify for the free copy of Smitten?
The Nesting Box and Wingspan Asia preorder will launch in early November, well after the 10% discount and the free Smitten anniversary celebration ends (the discount and free Smitten was originally planned for early September). Smitten will be available for $10 in the future.
One word of warning: co-operative games can also cause tension, particularly if there’s a disagreement about whose fault it is you lose…
Awesome to hear, I’m watching these eco developments closely. Regarding shrink wrap, I was under the impression that there’s a risk of humidity changes warping the paper components. Isn’t that why board games are shrink wrapped to begin with? Is that a myth, or did you get around it some other way? Very curious about that as I hate shrink wrap…
Malachi: Definitely, that is one of several concerns for a game that might sit on a shelf or in a warehouse for a long time. We made only a small print run of this game, so it’s not as big of a concern.
I love the big push to a more sustainable/eco-friendly industry and cutting down on the waste where it makes the most sense. However, I really do appreciate having the plastic wrap on the boxes since it protects the box. A lot of games sold at Target now only use stickers, and you can tell they take a beating before you get it back to the house. If an item was only sold directly through SM, it can receive the extra care it deserves to protect the game/box. Amazon/Target/Retailers you might not have as good of an experience. I know some people do not care much about what happens to the box or how it looks, but, the SM games have some of the best art and often times ends up on my shelf to display/wall.
Yeah, this is a bit of an experiment to see how it goes. Within each carton, Panda did wrap all 6 copies of the game together in paper to prevent exterior scuffing in transport, but it’s at the whim of consumers once it ends up on the shelf. We only have one game in Target right now, Wingspan, and it still has shrinkwrap.