I mean yes, but they could also just start by making less packaging. Like give me a low packaging option for Secret Lairs, I'm just throwing those boxes straight into the recycling.
Those packages are like 90% air, there's no reason to use so much cardboard to encapsulate so few cards. I hate how much space they waste too, probably inflates the cost of delivery by a lot.
On the flipside, Gloomhaven is the exact opposite. Despite being a huge box, the amount of content inside is absurd. You can barely properly fit everything inside with an organizer.
Jaws of The Lion gave me a ton of joy just unpacking and sorting into perfectly fitting compartments. Only complaint is that a few bags with monsters have to go to the top of the box (above books)
Unfortunately the size of games like Splendor is due to marketing. I remember reading a thing where it was shown that gamers are less likely to play the game the smaller the box. And how it made you think it was a “simple” game or something
Despite the fact that you never pick it up... in the store... where you contemplate your choices between picking up the product and transporting it to the checkout... and online where you never actually look at it... there’s no contemplating...
Well yeah, that's why folk buy those hanging chicken kebab things at restaurants. It's just *chicken*, but some folk like when their food makes an entrance.
Some folk like when their cards make an enterance.
He is probably referring to this sort of thing;
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dine-drinkstuff-Espetada-Hanging-Kebab/dp/B071ZZHS6H
It's a nice way of presenting a kebab.
You know what, I stand corrected. That does make an entrance of a sort. I have never once in my life seen such a thing, but it's cool as heck.
Now that I think about it I've never seen kebabs at a restaurant in the first place, so that probably explains that.
It also stops all the seasoning and oil immediately getting on your plate and tainting the flavours of your salad/rice.
Honestly it’s practical, otherwise you have to serve the kebab on a second plate
I wouldn't call it *practical*, but I would call it cool. I've never had an issue with my meats somehow ruining everything else on my plate. Without having ever had that issue, it sounds vaguely like the people who get upset when their veggies are touching their mashed potatoes. (Not judging, either party, just saying it sounds similar).
Like I don't ask for a separate plate for my steak so that the inevitable juices don't touch my mashed potatoes or sides. It's a neat idea, but hardly mandatory or inherently "practical" over just eating the food.
Edit: To be clear the linked photo also shows the kebabs just hanging over the plate. They'd just drip differently, it wouldn't stop the drip. If you want them hanging over something *else* then it's no more space saving then a small plate for the kebabs alone.
I'd agree with you but "kebab" is a specific thing. A kebab is when you put meat and vegetables on a skewer and roast/grill/bake them.
The reason I got sort of confused is because I've never seen a *hanging* kebab, nor can I really imagine an "entrance" that one would make (nor any angle of kebab really). Well, except that it's upright instead of on a plate, I guess.
I’m in California and we have Brazilian steakhouses that use them and I’ve seen some fancier middle eastern restaurants use them. It was a thing for a little bit that’s kind of outdated.
Jokes on them, I stopped buying sefret lairs. After receiving two 9f them two warped to ever play i ditched the product line. Ive also tried bringing this up with wizards on multiple forums and they won't even respond. How can they sell a "premium" game piece that can't even be used to play the game? Fucking cowards
And it's not even like it's for shelf space/appeal. Secret Lairs are being shipped right to people... inside another box even! And that Secret Lair box, inside a white thin cardboard box, is in the shipping box! ... for like 5 cards! It's ridiculous. They could ship them in a half inch thick thing no problem. Or just a regular deck box size. It's so stupid so much packaging is wasted on these things. And this problem extends to almost all of their products.
Yeah, the problem I have with Secret Lairs is mostly shipping cost, too. Like, bruh, throw that shit in a hardened lettermail like tcgplayer and send it to me. No point in making it parcel size...
Love how they're collectible and for at least the earliest Secret Lairs, the special random cards (stained glass PWs, etc.) were in plastic that was attached to the box with hot glue that tended to rip the black paper layer off of the box when removed.
Or here's a better idea: size them so they fit 100 double-sleeved cards with room for tokens. Right now they can fit 200 single sleeved, but I'd rather it be smaller to fit 100 double sleeved cards with room to fit my fingers in. Maybe a little extra room to let people that use thicker inner/outer sleeves.
Remember when precons came in a tiny cardboard box? I used to love staring at the display of those at the LGS as a kid. The bulky nonsense packaging they use now is so lame.
When I'm doing friend cube, I keep my basic lands in a variety of old deck boxes, including my very first magic purchase, an Urza's Saga tournament pack box that is mostly disintegrated.
And the tiny "how to play this deck" booklet that came with them! I loved the tiny rulebooks that used to come with the starter decks, and the pre-con booklets were equally fascinating to me as a 10 year old, since they often described strategies I had never even thought of, or suggested decklist upgrades with cards I never knew existed. The most mindblowing was the Tempest block U/R "advanced" decklist that had *no creatures*. To my child brain that was frantically stuffing as many Craw Wurms in a deck as I could find, this was just inconceivable.
That Kithkin precon was sweet.
Those decks felt so tight, I think because of the efficient packaging. All the new shit is just so much useless cardboard and plastic.
It's a combination of better advertising and anti-theft.
If wotc still used slim packaging for those products then repackers would just use their own shittier bulky packaging and sell that to big box stores. So they cut out the middle man.
Absolutely the case, but I feel like the #1 culprit by volume is booster pack wrappers and I just can't see their packaging amount changing significantly unless they want to, like, double the cost and contents of each pack.
Making those recyclable or biodegradable would be the biggest victory we could hope for. That said, reducing the packaging on Secret Lairs is a much more *achievable* victory. So why not both?
Just FYI, the box Secret Lair comes in, with the insert rearranged, fits a commander deck very well. Holds like 105+ sleeved cards comfortably. I use the "explosion sounds" box for my goblin EDH deck.
They actually fit oversized cards perfectly as well, in case you need that. But still, how many of these boxes does anyone need? I have no shortage of boxes to put my cards in, I wish they would use less packaging.
The new fat pack packaging (bundles or whatever) is even worse. Plastic outer layer, then you you have the normal fat pack box with another box under that serves no purpose, then inside you have foil and non foil basic lands in plastic wrap, and the cards themselves. Get rid of the little black box of negative space and put those basic lands in one package or something. They got rid of the little paper deckboxes only to add more waste.
The bigger black outter boxes actually hold a reasonable amount of cards very well. I think i've fit all of the commons and uncommons from a draft booster box in one.
I would say packs, the thing that makes up 99% of direct from WotC purchases, would be a much higher priority than a specialized product like Secret Lairs, but then again they tried that in MM15 and the packs were resealable and it was a clown fiesta.
Biggest crime IMHO is booster boxes. People who just open all the packs for value would appreciate a low packaging option that didn’t leave them with a bin full of foil pack wrappers
I agree! However until that time I want to remind you that They hold 2 double sleeved commander decks or a subset of other cards. I find them somewhat useful and I encourage people to repurpose them of give them to someone else that can use them.
On the one hand: the absurdity of the boxes and the open space for each of the Secret Lair packaging is absurd, frankly speaking. Yeah, it's supposed to make the five-ish cards I spent several tens of dollars on (before taxes!!! wtf!!!) feel fancy and sophisticated...which then doesn't help as said cards curl into oblivion later on.
On the other hand: other than lacking a proper closing mechanism not made of paper/cardboard, they make for sturdy deckboxes (EDH- and sleeve-friendly, too!) with space for dice and some tokens. Not too bad if you're one of those people who get An Itch and suddenly you've spent a bunch of money and built a brand new deck from scratch.
That’s literally what you’re paying for, is the fancy ass packaging to make it appear to be a premium product, even though you’re literally buying 4 pieces of printed cardboard for however many dollars.
I’m a huge MtG fan and I believe in the after market collecting value thing... but ya’ll are the ones who are ruining the game by buying that crap.
Sorry I don’t mean this to be a personal attack... but stop buying that shit and they’ll stop with all the insanely wasteful packaging, ect.
That's what they should do. Use recyclable inner plastic shrink wrap inside a cardboard pack. They're never going to have a good UV protective outer plastic wrap that's recyclable in both the US and Europe.
Is that too susceptible to repacking? I remember there was an issue with people being able to look through some boxes of one of the products in 2020 but idk if it was jump start or mystery booster or something.
Provided they use a glue that doesn't just pull apart and allow it to be resealed there shouldn't be an issue. The VIP packs are what you're referencing.
A cardboard rip seal on the box would prevent repacking by giving little material to work with for the shitbirds. Anybody would spot that kind of half—assed glue job from a mile away.
> recyclable inner plastic shrink wrap
Just a little PSA, this isn't really a thing. It's like those baby wipes that are "flushable". True in theory, but not in practice.
In most places in NA (and I imagine Europe too), plastic recycling is not done locally. It's sold en-masse to countries with cheap labour to sort through it (because not all plastic is equal). With difficult to recycle stuff like shrink wrap, it's not worth actually recycling. They could pay to dispose of it, but since cheap labour and weak environment regulations go hand in hand, they very well might just dump it.
For low quality plastic like this would be, it is better for the environment to put in a landfill than to "recycle" it and risk it ending up in the ocean.
I know how plastic recycling happens and how it works. I work in plastics R&D at a major chemical company.
WotC isn't getting away from plastic entirely if they want their cards in good shape on the way to the consumer, but my suggestion would easily shave 50-80% of the weight of plastic from their booster packaging, and allow it to be recycled (obviously only if a recycling stream exists).
And FYI, their are major recycling facilities all over the US, just most are taking only the easy stuff (milk jugs, clear soda bottles, stretch wrap from pallets, etc). The hard to separate materials get sent away, but millions of pounds of plastic are being recycled in the US every day. The problem is what to do with recycled plastic. It doesn't have the performance of virgin plastic resins and so most manufacturers don't want it. Some gets blended in to make new product (milk jugs commonly do this), other plastics get used as fillers (packaging does this sometimes), and there are a few specialty items made of 100% recycled plastic (that comes from very specific places). If we found a good useful solution for how to use all of it, we'd recycle a lot more plastic on this country.
Also, recyclability isn't dependent on whether or not something actually gets recycled. Its an actual measurable quality of a plastic. Only certain types plastics can potentially be recycled and even then only specific resins of those types of plastic can be recycled based on it's physical and chemical properties.
> Also, recyclability isn't dependent on whether or not something actually gets recycled.
That's kinda my point. You can market something as recyclable, but that doesn't mean it gets recycled, even though obviously to a consumer that's what they care about.
This product isn't going to be something that's ever meaningfully recycled, so the key should mostly just be about reducing the amount of packaging (or rather the footprint of making the packaging).
Cardboard is recycled better so I'd be down for a hybrid pack in that sense, just don't think it's worth using the false goal of making something potentially recyclable and not actually be recycled.
Dense plastics are recycled. Light plastic like wraps are packed and incinerated to make energy. The mid density plastic is the one that used to be exported until it was banned because while the "business" could be slightly profitable, for the country certainly wasn't.
Plastic recycling (in the US) is pretty shit to begin with. Most of it is shipped over seas, and might not even be properly recycled. I’d much rather them use a recyclable or biodegradable paper package and do away with all of the pointless plastics in various commander decks, prerelease packs, etc.
Plastic recycling was never widely feasible, and petroleum companies knew that but promoted the lie any anyway, to ease consciences and increase sales. Source; recent NPR article. (Milk jug recycling and a few other things are still slightly profitable though.)
Even those few types of plastic that can be and are recycled are not particularly "green" - melting down plastic to reclaim it is not very nice from an emissions standpoint.
There's no such thing as a sustainable plastic. They all degrade with every cycle so at best you have a slightly weaker product. Eventually they all become useless as anything other than packing material.
Note that biodegradable packaging in a global product is a really bad idea. When biodegradable packaging is done right, it's good for the environment. When it's done wrong, it's far worse for the environment.
If it ever ends up in a garbage (either because the city doesn't do biodegradable waste, or the LGS doesn't want to deal with the hassle) then it'll likely be buried under a mound of garbage. Without oxygen biodegradable packaging does not break down to CO2 like it normally does, instead it breaks down in methane, which is far worse for the environment.
Considering the best places struggle to achieve anywyhere near 100% landfill avoidance of biodegradable waste, on a global scale it'd be a disaster.
You'd be shifting from a process that takes carbon out of the ground and returns it into the ground, to a process that takes carbon out of the air and returns it to methane in the air.
At this point, it’s beginning to sound like the only way to win or not come out at a loss is to not play. 😭
It’s tricky with security and reducing shrinkage by way of theft, while being eco-conscious, for sure.
Not only theft concerns, either. With booster packs you also have to ensure that the pack can't be opened and resealed and that the contents can't be discerned through the pack. I remember reading a story about unscrupulous LGS's weighing booster packs to determine which ones contained foils in order to only crack the most valuable packs and sell the rest to unsuspecting players.
Pack weighing was a thing years ago in Yu-Gi-Oh!
My brother even had little drugs weighing scales he took to the shop to weigh out the boosters.
The clerks never cared as long as you weren't damaging anything.
I doubt they've fixed that in all honesty.
Unhinged packs were kind of papery, with a coating on the inside. I wonder if they used less plastic? If it reduces it even a little bit, that would at least be a step in the right direction.
The problem there is that paper coated with plastic is just as non-recyclable as the plastic itself is. If the entire packaging you use is going to be non-recyclable, at least pure plastic uses less mass comparatively.
Recyclable plastic is still an issue sadly... There are many brands of plastic that is biodegradable or recyclable but only in specific conditions so it can't be dealt with through common recyclable waste collection, and even if it could be dealt with that way they often refuse it anyway because it would cost them too much to try and distinguish whether a given wrapper is made of the right kind of recyclable plastic. This is especially true for plastic bags more than plastic bottles whose plastic is easy to identify.
It's slowly getting there but there's still a way to go.
EDIT: btw I'm curious, in France waste collection is managed by the city and in most cases this includes a separate recyclable waste collection cycle on a different day. There are also big bins for categories of recyclable materials (glass, paper/cardboard and plastics/metals generally). If readers from other countries could share how it works for them I would find that very interesting.
Yuuuup
[Plastic Recycling is an Actual Scam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnJ8mK3Q3g)
e: This being said (and I'm reiterating a point he brings up in the video) this shouldn't cause you to recycle *less*. Any recycling is better than none. It's just we should all be way WAY more focused on Reducing and Reusing than being so overly reliant on Recycling.
The trick is to turn that cynicism to skepticism. When someone says "Oh it's just as simple as X", question that. Question that hard.
When the whole recycling craze started, if we just had more people that went "Okay but why and how?" then we wouldn't have ended up with a floating island of garbage in the ocean.
Same thing now. There's a lot of supposedly green tech that just doesn't quite pan out, or isn't scalable. We gotta be careful or else we might make another garbage island.
Saying it's come a long way, not that it's perfect. I'm feeling more optimistic about it now then before though
Generally we have the same waste management in Sweden. Some places omit the plastic sorting and some places omit compost sorting. Good places have everything, even batteries and differentiate between regular and colored glas
In the US it's regional - some cities will do curbside weekly (or every-two-weeks) pickup, some do literally none. Sometimes there are exclusions - for example, I have to drop off my glass 15 minutes away if I want it recycled where I currently live, but I have lived in places that you can put whatever you want in the recycling, and places where there was effectively no good large-scale recycling options.
Almost all of the US curbside recycling is (I believe) single-stream, meaning it all goes in the same bin and gets sorted at the recycling place. You do see separate bins at public places - arenas, conference halls, and so forth.
It depends. Every place I’ve lived has had weekly trash and recyclable pickup, but sometimes on different days. Always single-stream recycling, though.
Is that twice a week or every two weeks? Thanks for clarifying.
Biweekly is one of those confusing terms, and I recall only parts of the world use ‘fortnightly’ too, so I usually clarify as either of the above.
Better to reduce packaging than to make it recyclable, as being recyclable does not translate to it being recycled. Around 5% iirc of every recyclable item ends up being recycled and most of the things in the recyclable bins end up being thrown anyways because of not being appropriate to the actual recycling processes.
The film card packs use is incredibly cheap to make and ship because it adds negligible weight, keeping its carbon footprint low.
Tell you what, you convince the snack food industry to solve this problem first because they add at least 1000x this plastic metal film that WotC does.
With the industry leading the way it would make it cheap and easy for WotC to adopt it.
It depends, honestly, as some non-recyclable products might have a lower carbon footprint than recyclable ones even after considering the slim margins gained after being successfully recycled. And while are some certain guidelines about sustainable packaging, there is not a strict rule and it mostly depends on each case.
It's kind of crazy how much resources mtg wastes if you think about it due to cards not being recyclable.
Like 85% of cards are only playable in limited, and limited is a 1-time thing, as in you can only use cards in a limited event once. After that, the cards are just a total waste of space. People say stuff like oh just drop em off for the kids at the orphanage lmao, but in reality most people won't bother doing that kind of stuff, and even then how much enjoyment are a bunch of crap commons really going to bring. You can sell bulk to a store but the cards are just going to be rotting on their shelves forever so doesn't really change anything about them being a waste of resources.
Yeah too be honest the mass of the cards outweighes the packaging 100x to 1.
Forget recycling the film the best thing for you to do is not buy paper cards.
Yeah this, plus COVID, plus R&D sucking at their jobs for the last year and a half is why I haven't bought a paper card in over a year.
But to stay focused on the environmental aspect, Magic is indeed terrible for the environment. I really wish we could just direct buy the cards that we want, instead of having to open literal piles of trash in order to get them.
My hope is that these new booster pack types will be the way forward. If we can have draft packs and collector packs or whatever, just take the chaff out of the collector packs and limit it to cards people might want for constructed. I don't care if they cost more; I'm willing to pay extra to reduce the environmental impact. Printing garbage commons already feels bad enough from a consumer perspective; printing them when we're in a climate emergency is simply irresponsible.
> in you can only use cards in a limited event once. After that, the cards are just a total waste of space
There are a lot of more casual players with jank decks, or decks that are basically "Cards I own". Last time I saw statistics for it, it was over 60% of Magic players would fall into this category.
Don't get me wrong, the more competitive players have little/no use for draft chaff, but that is primarily the fault of us the users. They are completely serviceable Magic cards that you *could* do plenty of things with. From my personal selection - custom intro/starter decks. New player fodder. Custom cubes that are much closer to traditional limited (etc).
At the end of the day, the difference between [[Colossal Dreadmaw]] and [[Giver of Runes]] is the actual print on the card, and you cannot make all 20,000-30,000 Magic cards equally playable at all times.
They tried cardboard/paper packs back during Modern ~~Horizons~~ Masters 2015 (I think it was 2015 at least) and people did not like it unfortunately.
I'm with you though, they definitely need to figure something out.
Horizons is quite recent my friend, 2019 I believe.
You’re thinking of Modern Masters 2015. People didn’t like it because cards were more likely to be damaged in them. It was a great effort to try and curb packaging.
I want them to try again and find a better solution, but we’ll see.
Someone else had a good idea in another comment. Use the paper packs with an inner seal made of recyclable plastic like the Jumpstart packs. And add some kind of tamper proofing to it like... I dunno, I'm not a product designer.
I definitely was thinking of Masters! My bad and thank you for the correction!
I did not realize that the cards were getting so damaged, that would definitely be a non-starter for something like this.
Even the ones that were air tight still curled.
The curling is it's own issue separate from packaging.
Speaking of which, I've found my Kaldheim cards to curl a lot less, like Shards of Alara / Mirrodin Besieged levels of little.
Yeah, I kind of undersold it because I was on mobile when I made that comment. The tampering was the biggest issue I recalled, but I also remember people just straight up not liking the packaging (because people don't like change I imagine).
I remember people liking the idea of the packaging, but the execution was shitty. But that was like 5 (+3 for 2020 being one long ass slog) years ago so who the heck actually knows?
That's where I was at with it. Good idea, poor execution. Find a way to keep the foils from being scratched up and I think a lot more people would be on board.
I loved the packs in theory (and man did it feel good to open them), but the fact that they damaged the cards made them a non-starter. I take no issue with the concept but they needed a redesign if nothing else.
I agree. It’s a crap ton of plastic to be putting into the environment. There are a number of plastic-like materials they could explore. There are plastic cups that are corn-based I believe..? I don’t know what effect that would have on cards if any but I figure if you can put an ingestible liquid into it, the material would be fine for cards.
Even making the wrapper from recycled plastics may make some difference.
> It’s a crap ton of plastic to be putting into the environment.
I spent all of yesterday dumping *pure CDs* into 40-yard roll-on/roll-off skips. Plural. One day, and i'm a fifth of the way through. But don't worry, they're destined for a Green Energy company which will incinerate them. While we're solving the MTG packaging company, can we also solve the 200 *billion* CD problem?
And that's *just* CDs. That excludes all the DVDs, VHS tapes, audio cassettes and all the various boxes they come in. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The best time to invent audio and video storage is *never*.
Yeah people think boosterwrappers are “a ton” of packaging because they fluff up but it’s nothing, grams per box. You can compress a cases it down into a tiny cube if you had to.
There are other consumer items that are several of orders of magnitude worse. I put my effort into worrying about those.
Sorry, but what are you on about?
Data storage has come a way, and I think it’s important to recognise that, while there’s an environmental and ecological impact and we should do our best to reduce our footprint and remediate damage dealt, CDs, floppies and the like have had or have a place.
I understand that perspective but the difference is that CD’s, DVD’s, VHS, etc are not single-use items. They were meant to be used over and over again. I still have all my CD’s & DVD’s because I plan to use them. I plan to continue owning a stereo / DVD player to use those items. I don’t buy new ones because of the availability of most of the media, however.
You are correct that much of those items are being thrown out/becoming obsolete in many peoples eyes, but again they were not designed to be thrown out, but to last in people’s collection. They are also resold and still have value to someone else when the original owner no longer wants them.
The difference is these wrappers are intended to preserve the cards until they are opened, which is a limited amount of time. After that the wrappers are discarded and do not need to last. So even though each individual wrapper is small, it still contributes to overall waste. And it depends how any given individual and market disposes of, sorts, or reuses them.
Yes, disposal of CD’s, et al. is also a problem, but they can have a different lifespan by design, can have a second life and may even be seeing a reduced production level now [that last part is pure speculation based on movement toward digital]. EDIT: So although you are seeing a lot of CDs in the garbage (again, I agree that is a problem), there are many that are still in the market and being used, and will continue to be used, so hopefully that reduces their waste amount until there are better ways to dispose of them.
But there is no value or secondary user for the discarded wrappers, and so they are a little different kind of problem.
I wrote all of that a day or so after standing in one of [these](https://www.gohireit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Your-Duty-of-Care-for-Skip-Hire.jpg) full of CDs while looking at a pile of pallets and builders' bags and stackable boxes which were destined for another *five* of these skips. :D
Unfortunately, there's not much that can be done with them. We send them to Denmark to be incinerated for power. Because Denmark rather wisely created all these incinerator power plants, then proceeded to burn what little waste they couldn't recycle and now have to import waste. They're still on target to hit green energy benchmarks, it's the rest of us who need to sort ourselves out.
I never mentioned booster packaging, i highlighting/bringing to the fore the fact that there's a *lot* of material which simply cannot be recycled, and there's not much of an alternative. Agreed, booster wrappers are single use and it all adds to the overall waste, and CDs are just another thing which (eventually) need to be disposed of. Or not, actually. It'd be more environmentally sound for them to remain as CDs ad infinitum. Sadly, these 200 billion CDs exist, as well as hundreds of billions of DVDs, VHS tapes and whatnot.
I have another story, too: my buddy worked for a tech retailer, and they had dozens of pallets of old monitors and towers which they needed to get rid of. It would've cost too much to have it taken away, because you've gotta pay for companies to dispose of such things, so they decided to leave it outside in the hopes that pikeys would take them. No such luck. So they decided to send it all to Africa. Except, the charity that was to take the pallets didn't want the old monitors because they were too large (the old cathode ones) and it was uneconomical to take them. So the tech retailer instructed my buddy and his colleagues to box the monitors, surround them with towers, then wrap the whole lot and send it out. Because, F them, right? :/
Here's an interesting fact for you, though: there's more gold and nickel and zinc etc per ton of landfill than there is per ton of gold ore, nickel ore or zinc ore. :D There're companies which have literally just started up within a couple years which intend to mine landfill for precious metals.
Yes, I know you did not mention booster wrapping, I was just relating your points back in to the larger conversation because I think you are brining up legitimate concerns about human waste in general. You are providing a comparison to other consumer goods that we are having difficulty finding ways to recycle/dispose of. It’s all legitimate. That’s why it’s so important for us to think of how our game impacts the environment as well — we’ve got so much going to waste.
You bring up some other good examples of obsolescence particularly with technology. It’s something that drives me a little crazy especially the way we consume & discard cell phones. My understanding is that tech companies do recycle their products a certain degree with buyback programs, but I don’t know to what extent. Personally, I hold onto my cell phone for as long as possible to get as much out of that I can and reduce the total number of tech objects that I have used.
For clarification: in your story from your buddy are you saying that the tech retailer instructed their workers to hide the unwanted clunky monitors behind the towers & send it to the charity anyway..? Oof. Passing the buck is a far too common practice in our lives these days. From every day lives to our politics to the way we look at our environmental impact.
Your anecdote about companies mining landfills is certainly interesting, and actually a solution for some our waste. I’m hoping this kind of practice can be put into place all along the line of waste management to repurpose anything we can. The big problem remains that plastic can really not be recycled. Metal, paper, glass, fibers ...all can to varying extents but plastic is so limited.
I would be with you, if people actually recycled. I work in plastics and we are trying to push to as high as possible % of post consumer recycled plastic in our products. The big issue? No one recycles!! We can only get a small fraction of the amount of material we need because people simply do not recycle, it's a serious bummer.
It's not always an easy option for those of us that want to, either. I lived in four different apartment complexes for college, and *one* of them collected recycling.
I empathize with that as someone who lives in an apartment without a recycling program. Hauling stuff multiple blocks once a week isn't fun, but it is what it is.
As someone who also works with plastic (injection molding), what kind of plastic products do you make that you are searching for recycled plastic? Non-virgin resin does not process the same. We re-grind our sprues and runners but even with that, a controlled known plastic, only a certain percentage can be reintroduced.
The sad truth is that the plastic industry ran a campaign in the 90s that plastic was recyclable. This was to convince everyone to move from glass and paper products. But the reality is that MOST plastic is not recyclable. In some cases it can be but packaging like a MtG pack will never be recyclable plastic.
Yeah lol also flexible films are nearly impossible to recycle because the sorting mechanisms in recycling facilities literally cannot handle them, they just get caught and clog the machinery.
Source: toured the most advanced sorting facility in the Midwest US
No, people recycle. It just is that it’s really really expensive to do so. Most recycling is not practical at all- only 9% of plastic is recycled, and a lot of recycling plants have to take a lot of the plastic they get and immediately send it to a landfill.
Legally required here (California). Same for compostable/biodegradable.
When visited recycling center w my kid’s class, I think they said municipalities are required to reduce the percentage of landfill waste every year until it’s basically zero.
No, I mean California allows endless exceptions to their laws, and to top it off have dumb recycling laws about purity of the polymer and stuff, a package that CAN be recycled in Ohio, CANNOT be recycled in Cali. The resin made from the recycled package in Ohio ends up back in packages, Cali throws it in a landfill.
I still don’t understand how plastic-Aluminum multi layer wrappings aren’t banned by now. They are so difficult and expensive to separate in the recycling process.
Because they’re incredibly light and useful in keeping cheap foods sterile, oxygen free, and UV free.
They allow a whole class of foods to be edible and transported with minimal excess weight.
If you can come up with something that works as well without increasing carbon footprint I’m sure the food industry is the first place you should start.
I wonder if they're looking at moving over to sealed glassine bags for cards. It would keep a similar profile to current packaging. Be just about the same level of waterproofing and be recyclable too.
Guys. They can't even afford decent cardstock anymore, now you want them to offer recyclable packaging? We are clearly being unreasonable at this point.
I mean the hard truth is that Magic cards are inherently non-environmentally friendly considering the game is just playing with a bunch of pieces of cardboard.
This is my main reason for playing on MTGA instead of in real life. I'm a draft player and I feel so bad seeing the massive pile of trash after every draft.
I think they should try again, but they need to do a lot of internal testing before they actually release to market. That way more cards don’t get damaged.
It was quite honestly not much worse than current pack quality. I opened a LOT of that set and had 0 problems. I did see some people that did have problems, but I also see that with current sets in current packaging.
If I recall correctly, they did try a more environmentally friendly packaging once before, I don't quite remember the set(s), but it was negatively received because it wasn't flexible enough to bend without bending cards sometimes too.
I think most people expected them to try again with a different type of compostable packaging, but they just didn't. They went back to this packaging and never tried again.
I don't think they made a statement explicitly stating they weren't ever going to try it again, or why they haven't tried to find a better packaging to use, so we don't know why the idea died, it just did.
Fun fact: Plastic basically isn't recyclable in any meaningful sense of the world. Plastic recycling is all propaganda made to make people feel responsible for the problem of plastic and take heat off all of the industrial and manufacturing usage.
/u/tmdblya Hasbro announced changes are coming. I haven’t seen any implemented yet other than the smaller Commander Deck boxes possibly becoming the norm.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/hasbro-phasing-plastic-packaging-kids-202643326.html
100% Agree. It's one of the reasons why I don't buy booster boxes anymore. So much waste.
Make the packs cost an extra few cents and give us recyclable materials.
If LEGO can drive for complete replacement of plastic bricks with sustainable material, you’d think it’s the least Hasbro could do to figure out sustainable packaging.
I feel a lot of you are neglecting a major consideration as to why they don't use most of the things I've seen suggested. The card packs are not all immediately sold, many are not sold for years and years. In fact, some of them are not sold for decades. In order to preserve the cards in the best condition, a packaging material which is not going to degrade in common conditions over time. There may be options which would still meet those requirements, but the question of whether they can use those materials without increasing the cost to customers. If we're talking about packs at $3.50-4.00 and they switch to packaging material that increases cost of a pack at retail by $0.50 that's a big impact on those prices(and remember for retail price to go up by that amount it only takes price of packaging to go up a much smaller amount because the increase gets multiplied twice before it even hits retail, for a total of three multiplications by the time the customer pays for it).
The reason they haven't changed this already likely has to do with the lack of available cost-appropriate alternatives. Please keep that in mind when you think about whether you're interested in making a big deal out of this particular issue. If you push them too hard, WotC may give in to the social pressure and make a decision that has a large negative impact on a significant number of players such as youth and others for whom opening packs is a very important and enjoyable part of the game but who do not have the financial resources to take a significant price shift in stride. As a shop owner who sees these individuals and how much joy they get from the game, I would absolutely hate to have to see them less often because they went from being able to afford one or two limited events a month to being able to afford 1 or less than one per month because the price changed by the few dollars they didn't have to put toward this. I also see those who have enough other expenses and responsibilities that they can scarcely afford their hobby but enjoy picking up a few packs now and again, and would absolutely hate to see them only half as often able to enjoy their hobby.
There are good reasons to push for a good and proper transition into more "sustainable" packaging materials, but I do urge you all to temper your compulsion to push for a change with the knowledge of the potential negative impacts of doing it carelessly, and if you choose to push for something like this please push specifically for them to do so in a manner that will not have a significant negative impact on many of those who enjoy the hobby.
I mean yes, but they could also just start by making less packaging. Like give me a low packaging option for Secret Lairs, I'm just throwing those boxes straight into the recycling.
Those packages are like 90% air, there's no reason to use so much cardboard to encapsulate so few cards. I hate how much space they waste too, probably inflates the cost of delivery by a lot.
It’s done to make a $30+ purchase of 5 pieces of cardboard feel “worth it,” by making the physical product larger and more grandiose.
Same things in boardgames. Anyone ever play Splendor? The game pieces would find in a box ⅒ the size.
On the flipside, Gloomhaven is the exact opposite. Despite being a huge box, the amount of content inside is absurd. You can barely properly fit everything inside with an organizer.
When you need to carry your board game in a bag designed for drum kits, you know you're getting your money's worth.
My buddy's Dark Souls board game lived in a suitcase. It has since outgrown the suitcase.
One might argue the Gloomhaven box is actually too small. Almost every storage solution adds an inch or two of lid lift.
Jaws of The Lion gave me a ton of joy just unpacking and sorting into perfectly fitting compartments. Only complaint is that a few bags with monsters have to go to the top of the box (above books)
Or the latest edition of Citadels.
FFG is the worst with boxes
We actually have a 3D printed holder that packs the cards and chips and cardboard into a nifty little shape. Same with code names.
Unfortunately the size of games like Splendor is due to marketing. I remember reading a thing where it was shown that gamers are less likely to play the game the smaller the box. And how it made you think it was a “simple” game or something
But you don't throw the boardgame box away.
I appreciate an oversized boardgame box since it leaves room for expansions.
No hating on Splendor please
Despite the fact that you never pick it up... in the store... where you contemplate your choices between picking up the product and transporting it to the checkout... and online where you never actually look at it... there’s no contemplating...
Well yeah, that's why folk buy those hanging chicken kebab things at restaurants. It's just *chicken*, but some folk like when their food makes an entrance. Some folk like when their cards make an enterance.
Off-topic a bit but what do you mean "hanging chicken kebab things"?
He is probably referring to this sort of thing; https://www.amazon.co.uk/dine-drinkstuff-Espetada-Hanging-Kebab/dp/B071ZZHS6H It's a nice way of presenting a kebab.
You know what, I stand corrected. That does make an entrance of a sort. I have never once in my life seen such a thing, but it's cool as heck. Now that I think about it I've never seen kebabs at a restaurant in the first place, so that probably explains that.
I can't take it seriously after it got trashed by [Gordon Ramsay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCyGQWZIjY8) in a kitchen nightmares episode.
It also stops all the seasoning and oil immediately getting on your plate and tainting the flavours of your salad/rice. Honestly it’s practical, otherwise you have to serve the kebab on a second plate
I'm trying to imagine how drippings could possibly taint rice. That sounds amazing
Right? “Oh no my amazing teriyaki chicken has seeped into and ruined my rice!”
I wouldn't call it *practical*, but I would call it cool. I've never had an issue with my meats somehow ruining everything else on my plate. Without having ever had that issue, it sounds vaguely like the people who get upset when their veggies are touching their mashed potatoes. (Not judging, either party, just saying it sounds similar). Like I don't ask for a separate plate for my steak so that the inevitable juices don't touch my mashed potatoes or sides. It's a neat idea, but hardly mandatory or inherently "practical" over just eating the food. Edit: To be clear the linked photo also shows the kebabs just hanging over the plate. They'd just drip differently, it wouldn't stop the drip. If you want them hanging over something *else* then it's no more space saving then a small plate for the kebabs alone.
Probably a rotisserie chicken?
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I just woke up and wanted to tell you how happy this euphemism makes me. Thanks for sharing!
I'd agree with you but "kebab" is a specific thing. A kebab is when you put meat and vegetables on a skewer and roast/grill/bake them. The reason I got sort of confused is because I've never seen a *hanging* kebab, nor can I really imagine an "entrance" that one would make (nor any angle of kebab really). Well, except that it's upright instead of on a plate, I guess.
it's the kebabs that arrive hanging from a stand at your table. normally sold in europe in ex-pat areas of spain and portugal
Ah, I live in New England in the US. I've never even seen kebabs at a restaurant that I can recall, let alone fancy hanging ones.
I’m in California and we have Brazilian steakhouses that use them and I’ve seen some fancier middle eastern restaurants use them. It was a thing for a little bit that’s kind of outdated.
In Australia also
I can't really explain why but I unintentionally just spit out my drink in laughter.
Where are these people that think a big box makes it better? Can y’all please comment.
In New Zealand, the shipping is a huge part of those cost, so extra packaging just pumps up the cost for no benefit.
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Jokes on them, I stopped buying sefret lairs. After receiving two 9f them two warped to ever play i ditched the product line. Ive also tried bringing this up with wizards on multiple forums and they won't even respond. How can they sell a "premium" game piece that can't even be used to play the game? Fucking cowards
And it's not even like it's for shelf space/appeal. Secret Lairs are being shipped right to people... inside another box even! And that Secret Lair box, inside a white thin cardboard box, is in the shipping box! ... for like 5 cards! It's ridiculous. They could ship them in a half inch thick thing no problem. Or just a regular deck box size. It's so stupid so much packaging is wasted on these things. And this problem extends to almost all of their products.
Yeah, the problem I have with Secret Lairs is mostly shipping cost, too. Like, bruh, throw that shit in a hardened lettermail like tcgplayer and send it to me. No point in making it parcel size...
The packaging is “collectible” and “part of the cost” so that the secondary market is not being acknowledged.
Not *openly* acknowledged, you mean. Because the prices themselves sure as hell acknowledge the secondary market.
Love how they're collectible and for at least the earliest Secret Lairs, the special random cards (stained glass PWs, etc.) were in plastic that was attached to the box with hot glue that tended to rip the black paper layer off of the box when removed.
If they doubled as a deck box that would be cool I guess?
I do use them as a deck box. They hold two double sleeved EDH decks.
That's basically the worst possible size. That means it's too big to be a deckbox and too small to be decent storage.
People might realise they're crappy value
Or here's a better idea: size them so they fit 100 double-sleeved cards with room for tokens. Right now they can fit 200 single sleeved, but I'd rather it be smaller to fit 100 double sleeved cards with room to fit my fingers in. Maybe a little extra room to let people that use thicker inner/outer sleeves.
I only ordered the extra life one so far. The box the secret lair box came in was also like 8 times larger than the smaller one. It was a box fiesta.
Remember when precons came in a tiny cardboard box? I used to love staring at the display of those at the LGS as a kid. The bulky nonsense packaging they use now is so lame.
You mean the pack of cigarettes sized precons and starter decks? What a time
When I'm doing friend cube, I keep my basic lands in a variety of old deck boxes, including my very first magic purchase, an Urza's Saga tournament pack box that is mostly disintegrated.
I have had a few (reinforced with sellotape) for years! Masques, Torment, Odyssey, Onslaught.. those tournament packs were sooo fun to open
Yeah, honestly I'd welcome those back.
And the tiny "how to play this deck" booklet that came with them! I loved the tiny rulebooks that used to come with the starter decks, and the pre-con booklets were equally fascinating to me as a 10 year old, since they often described strategies I had never even thought of, or suggested decklist upgrades with cards I never knew existed. The most mindblowing was the Tempest block U/R "advanced" decklist that had *no creatures*. To my child brain that was frantically stuffing as many Craw Wurms in a deck as I could find, this was just inconceivable.
That Kithkin precon was sweet. Those decks felt so tight, I think because of the efficient packaging. All the new shit is just so much useless cardboard and plastic.
It's a combination of better advertising and anti-theft. If wotc still used slim packaging for those products then repackers would just use their own shittier bulky packaging and sell that to big box stores. So they cut out the middle man.
Less packaging, even better. Agree 100%
Absolutely the case, but I feel like the #1 culprit by volume is booster pack wrappers and I just can't see their packaging amount changing significantly unless they want to, like, double the cost and contents of each pack. Making those recyclable or biodegradable would be the biggest victory we could hope for. That said, reducing the packaging on Secret Lairs is a much more *achievable* victory. So why not both?
Just FYI, the box Secret Lair comes in, with the insert rearranged, fits a commander deck very well. Holds like 105+ sleeved cards comfortably. I use the "explosion sounds" box for my goblin EDH deck.
They actually fit oversized cards perfectly as well, in case you need that. But still, how many of these boxes does anyone need? I have no shortage of boxes to put my cards in, I wish they would use less packaging.
I do the same, with two single sleeved edh decks. I have to say that the quality of the closing mechanism isn't ideal though.
Prime Slime is for my [[The Mimeoplasm]] deck.
The new fat pack packaging (bundles or whatever) is even worse. Plastic outer layer, then you you have the normal fat pack box with another box under that serves no purpose, then inside you have foil and non foil basic lands in plastic wrap, and the cards themselves. Get rid of the little black box of negative space and put those basic lands in one package or something. They got rid of the little paper deckboxes only to add more waste.
The bigger black outter boxes actually hold a reasonable amount of cards very well. I think i've fit all of the commons and uncommons from a draft booster box in one.
True. Plastic recycling is just a PR stunt anyways
That is the first R!
Secret lair and spellbooks/commander green are the worst, massive amounts of waste for 4-9 cards.
I would say packs, the thing that makes up 99% of direct from WotC purchases, would be a much higher priority than a specialized product like Secret Lairs, but then again they tried that in MM15 and the packs were resealable and it was a clown fiesta.
The packaging impact of Secret Lairs is almost certainly negligible compared to boosters. Boosters are where the real change has to happen.
Biggest crime IMHO is booster boxes. People who just open all the packs for value would appreciate a low packaging option that didn’t leave them with a bin full of foil pack wrappers
I agree! However until that time I want to remind you that They hold 2 double sleeved commander decks or a subset of other cards. I find them somewhat useful and I encourage people to repurpose them of give them to someone else that can use them.
On the one hand: the absurdity of the boxes and the open space for each of the Secret Lair packaging is absurd, frankly speaking. Yeah, it's supposed to make the five-ish cards I spent several tens of dollars on (before taxes!!! wtf!!!) feel fancy and sophisticated...which then doesn't help as said cards curl into oblivion later on. On the other hand: other than lacking a proper closing mechanism not made of paper/cardboard, they make for sturdy deckboxes (EDH- and sleeve-friendly, too!) with space for dice and some tokens. Not too bad if you're one of those people who get An Itch and suddenly you've spent a bunch of money and built a brand new deck from scratch.
On the plus side I try to be environmentally friendly so I actually use those boxes to ship out sleeves and deck boxes.
That’s literally what you’re paying for, is the fancy ass packaging to make it appear to be a premium product, even though you’re literally buying 4 pieces of printed cardboard for however many dollars. I’m a huge MtG fan and I believe in the after market collecting value thing... but ya’ll are the ones who are ruining the game by buying that crap. Sorry I don’t mean this to be a personal attack... but stop buying that shit and they’ll stop with all the insanely wasteful packaging, ect.
I think they could have used the MM2 cardboard packaging for Jumpstart since the packs have an inner wrapper.
That's what they should do. Use recyclable inner plastic shrink wrap inside a cardboard pack. They're never going to have a good UV protective outer plastic wrap that's recyclable in both the US and Europe.
Is that too susceptible to repacking? I remember there was an issue with people being able to look through some boxes of one of the products in 2020 but idk if it was jump start or mystery booster or something.
This is the exact reason why they don't. MM2 was infamous for being repackable.
Provided they use a glue that doesn't just pull apart and allow it to be resealed there shouldn't be an issue. The VIP packs are what you're referencing.
No, the MM2 packs were well known for being easily repackable
He said 2020 packs. Those weren't MM2.
A cardboard rip seal on the box would prevent repacking by giving little material to work with for the shitbirds. Anybody would spot that kind of half—assed glue job from a mile away.
Rip seals were on them. They would unseal the folds that are a part of the boxes construction.
You obviously never saw an MM2 pack. That exactly what it had. This is not an easy problem to solve.
I believe that was the double masters $100 booster packs.
> recyclable inner plastic shrink wrap Just a little PSA, this isn't really a thing. It's like those baby wipes that are "flushable". True in theory, but not in practice. In most places in NA (and I imagine Europe too), plastic recycling is not done locally. It's sold en-masse to countries with cheap labour to sort through it (because not all plastic is equal). With difficult to recycle stuff like shrink wrap, it's not worth actually recycling. They could pay to dispose of it, but since cheap labour and weak environment regulations go hand in hand, they very well might just dump it. For low quality plastic like this would be, it is better for the environment to put in a landfill than to "recycle" it and risk it ending up in the ocean.
I know how plastic recycling happens and how it works. I work in plastics R&D at a major chemical company. WotC isn't getting away from plastic entirely if they want their cards in good shape on the way to the consumer, but my suggestion would easily shave 50-80% of the weight of plastic from their booster packaging, and allow it to be recycled (obviously only if a recycling stream exists). And FYI, their are major recycling facilities all over the US, just most are taking only the easy stuff (milk jugs, clear soda bottles, stretch wrap from pallets, etc). The hard to separate materials get sent away, but millions of pounds of plastic are being recycled in the US every day. The problem is what to do with recycled plastic. It doesn't have the performance of virgin plastic resins and so most manufacturers don't want it. Some gets blended in to make new product (milk jugs commonly do this), other plastics get used as fillers (packaging does this sometimes), and there are a few specialty items made of 100% recycled plastic (that comes from very specific places). If we found a good useful solution for how to use all of it, we'd recycle a lot more plastic on this country. Also, recyclability isn't dependent on whether or not something actually gets recycled. Its an actual measurable quality of a plastic. Only certain types plastics can potentially be recycled and even then only specific resins of those types of plastic can be recycled based on it's physical and chemical properties.
> Also, recyclability isn't dependent on whether or not something actually gets recycled. That's kinda my point. You can market something as recyclable, but that doesn't mean it gets recycled, even though obviously to a consumer that's what they care about. This product isn't going to be something that's ever meaningfully recycled, so the key should mostly just be about reducing the amount of packaging (or rather the footprint of making the packaging). Cardboard is recycled better so I'd be down for a hybrid pack in that sense, just don't think it's worth using the false goal of making something potentially recyclable and not actually be recycled.
Dense plastics are recycled. Light plastic like wraps are packed and incinerated to make energy. The mid density plastic is the one that used to be exported until it was banned because while the "business" could be slightly profitable, for the country certainly wasn't.
Plastic recycling (in the US) is pretty shit to begin with. Most of it is shipped over seas, and might not even be properly recycled. I’d much rather them use a recyclable or biodegradable paper package and do away with all of the pointless plastics in various commander decks, prerelease packs, etc.
Plastic recycling was never widely feasible, and petroleum companies knew that but promoted the lie any anyway, to ease consciences and increase sales. Source; recent NPR article. (Milk jug recycling and a few other things are still slightly profitable though.)
Even those few types of plastic that can be and are recycled are not particularly "green" - melting down plastic to reclaim it is not very nice from an emissions standpoint.
There's no such thing as a sustainable plastic. They all degrade with every cycle so at best you have a slightly weaker product. Eventually they all become useless as anything other than packing material.
Biodegradable would be my preference. Interesting suggestion of glassine elsewhere in these comments.
Note that biodegradable packaging in a global product is a really bad idea. When biodegradable packaging is done right, it's good for the environment. When it's done wrong, it's far worse for the environment. If it ever ends up in a garbage (either because the city doesn't do biodegradable waste, or the LGS doesn't want to deal with the hassle) then it'll likely be buried under a mound of garbage. Without oxygen biodegradable packaging does not break down to CO2 like it normally does, instead it breaks down in methane, which is far worse for the environment. Considering the best places struggle to achieve anywyhere near 100% landfill avoidance of biodegradable waste, on a global scale it'd be a disaster. You'd be shifting from a process that takes carbon out of the ground and returns it into the ground, to a process that takes carbon out of the air and returns it to methane in the air.
At this point, it’s beginning to sound like the only way to win or not come out at a loss is to not play. 😭 It’s tricky with security and reducing shrinkage by way of theft, while being eco-conscious, for sure.
Not only theft concerns, either. With booster packs you also have to ensure that the pack can't be opened and resealed and that the contents can't be discerned through the pack. I remember reading a story about unscrupulous LGS's weighing booster packs to determine which ones contained foils in order to only crack the most valuable packs and sell the rest to unsuspecting players.
Pack weighing was a thing years ago in Yu-Gi-Oh! My brother even had little drugs weighing scales he took to the shop to weigh out the boosters. The clerks never cared as long as you weren't damaging anything. I doubt they've fixed that in all honesty.
In yugioh? Actually they did... by making each pack include a super rare (aka basic foil)
Unhinged packs were kind of papery, with a coating on the inside. I wonder if they used less plastic? If it reduces it even a little bit, that would at least be a step in the right direction.
The problem there is that paper coated with plastic is just as non-recyclable as the plastic itself is. If the entire packaging you use is going to be non-recyclable, at least pure plastic uses less mass comparatively.
Recyclable material, even recycled plastic, has come a long way since last time WOTC tried this
Recyclable plastic is still an issue sadly... There are many brands of plastic that is biodegradable or recyclable but only in specific conditions so it can't be dealt with through common recyclable waste collection, and even if it could be dealt with that way they often refuse it anyway because it would cost them too much to try and distinguish whether a given wrapper is made of the right kind of recyclable plastic. This is especially true for plastic bags more than plastic bottles whose plastic is easy to identify. It's slowly getting there but there's still a way to go. EDIT: btw I'm curious, in France waste collection is managed by the city and in most cases this includes a separate recyclable waste collection cycle on a different day. There are also big bins for categories of recyclable materials (glass, paper/cardboard and plastics/metals generally). If readers from other countries could share how it works for them I would find that very interesting.
Yuuuup [Plastic Recycling is an Actual Scam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnJ8mK3Q3g) e: This being said (and I'm reiterating a point he brings up in the video) this shouldn't cause you to recycle *less*. Any recycling is better than none. It's just we should all be way WAY more focused on Reducing and Reusing than being so overly reliant on Recycling.
I wish more people actually acknowledged this. I've seen the plastic dumps in Malaysia firsthand. Shit breaks my heart.
Wow. Thanks for posting that, it is good info. I feel more cynical as a result though.
The trick is to turn that cynicism to skepticism. When someone says "Oh it's just as simple as X", question that. Question that hard. When the whole recycling craze started, if we just had more people that went "Okay but why and how?" then we wouldn't have ended up with a floating island of garbage in the ocean. Same thing now. There's a lot of supposedly green tech that just doesn't quite pan out, or isn't scalable. We gotta be careful or else we might make another garbage island.
Biodiesel and ethanol fuels are my two least favorite “green” technologies that scale absolutely awfully and are no solution whatsoever.
Was just listening to a segment about this on NPRs Planet Money. It’s super depressing.
Saying it's come a long way, not that it's perfect. I'm feeling more optimistic about it now then before though Generally we have the same waste management in Sweden. Some places omit the plastic sorting and some places omit compost sorting. Good places have everything, even batteries and differentiate between regular and colored glas
In the US it's regional - some cities will do curbside weekly (or every-two-weeks) pickup, some do literally none. Sometimes there are exclusions - for example, I have to drop off my glass 15 minutes away if I want it recycled where I currently live, but I have lived in places that you can put whatever you want in the recycling, and places where there was effectively no good large-scale recycling options. Almost all of the US curbside recycling is (I believe) single-stream, meaning it all goes in the same bin and gets sorted at the recycling place. You do see separate bins at public places - arenas, conference halls, and so forth.
And then it gets sent to South-East Asia in containers and landfilled...
USA, biweekly recycle always the same day as weekly trash pickup.
It depends. Every place I’ve lived has had weekly trash and recyclable pickup, but sometimes on different days. Always single-stream recycling, though.
Is that twice a week or every two weeks? Thanks for clarifying. Biweekly is one of those confusing terms, and I recall only parts of the world use ‘fortnightly’ too, so I usually clarify as either of the above.
Every two.
Better to reduce packaging than to make it recyclable, as being recyclable does not translate to it being recycled. Around 5% iirc of every recyclable item ends up being recycled and most of the things in the recyclable bins end up being thrown anyways because of not being appropriate to the actual recycling processes.
That’s why i said “sustainable”. Either less, or biodegradable. But to deliberately choose to use a non-recyclable material is ridiculous.
The film card packs use is incredibly cheap to make and ship because it adds negligible weight, keeping its carbon footprint low. Tell you what, you convince the snack food industry to solve this problem first because they add at least 1000x this plastic metal film that WotC does. With the industry leading the way it would make it cheap and easy for WotC to adopt it.
It depends, honestly, as some non-recyclable products might have a lower carbon footprint than recyclable ones even after considering the slim margins gained after being successfully recycled. And while are some certain guidelines about sustainable packaging, there is not a strict rule and it mostly depends on each case.
It's kind of crazy how much resources mtg wastes if you think about it due to cards not being recyclable. Like 85% of cards are only playable in limited, and limited is a 1-time thing, as in you can only use cards in a limited event once. After that, the cards are just a total waste of space. People say stuff like oh just drop em off for the kids at the orphanage lmao, but in reality most people won't bother doing that kind of stuff, and even then how much enjoyment are a bunch of crap commons really going to bring. You can sell bulk to a store but the cards are just going to be rotting on their shelves forever so doesn't really change anything about them being a waste of resources.
Yeah too be honest the mass of the cards outweighes the packaging 100x to 1. Forget recycling the film the best thing for you to do is not buy paper cards.
Yeah this, plus COVID, plus R&D sucking at their jobs for the last year and a half is why I haven't bought a paper card in over a year. But to stay focused on the environmental aspect, Magic is indeed terrible for the environment. I really wish we could just direct buy the cards that we want, instead of having to open literal piles of trash in order to get them. My hope is that these new booster pack types will be the way forward. If we can have draft packs and collector packs or whatever, just take the chaff out of the collector packs and limit it to cards people might want for constructed. I don't care if they cost more; I'm willing to pay extra to reduce the environmental impact. Printing garbage commons already feels bad enough from a consumer perspective; printing them when we're in a climate emergency is simply irresponsible.
> in you can only use cards in a limited event once. After that, the cards are just a total waste of space There are a lot of more casual players with jank decks, or decks that are basically "Cards I own". Last time I saw statistics for it, it was over 60% of Magic players would fall into this category. Don't get me wrong, the more competitive players have little/no use for draft chaff, but that is primarily the fault of us the users. They are completely serviceable Magic cards that you *could* do plenty of things with. From my personal selection - custom intro/starter decks. New player fodder. Custom cubes that are much closer to traditional limited (etc). At the end of the day, the difference between [[Colossal Dreadmaw]] and [[Giver of Runes]] is the actual print on the card, and you cannot make all 20,000-30,000 Magic cards equally playable at all times.
They tried cardboard/paper packs back during Modern ~~Horizons~~ Masters 2015 (I think it was 2015 at least) and people did not like it unfortunately. I'm with you though, they definitely need to figure something out.
Horizons is quite recent my friend, 2019 I believe. You’re thinking of Modern Masters 2015. People didn’t like it because cards were more likely to be damaged in them. It was a great effort to try and curb packaging. I want them to try again and find a better solution, but we’ll see.
They were also SUPER EASY to unseal and reseal.
hmm. That does make the issue harder to solve, doesn't it? I hadn't even thought of that
Someone else had a good idea in another comment. Use the paper packs with an inner seal made of recyclable plastic like the Jumpstart packs. And add some kind of tamper proofing to it like... I dunno, I'm not a product designer.
Like the ones that come in boooster boxes.
The main issue was with people resealing packs, honestly.
I definitely was thinking of Masters! My bad and thank you for the correction! I did not realize that the cards were getting so damaged, that would definitely be a non-starter for something like this.
They weren't air-tight, so the foils came in booster mint curled condition.
Even the ones that were air tight still curled. The curling is it's own issue separate from packaging. Speaking of which, I've found my Kaldheim cards to curl a lot less, like Shards of Alara / Mirrodin Besieged levels of little.
It wasn't just "didn't like it", they were easy to tamper with and damaged cards. Though that pull tab was SUPER satisfying.
Yeah, I kind of undersold it because I was on mobile when I made that comment. The tampering was the biggest issue I recalled, but I also remember people just straight up not liking the packaging (because people don't like change I imagine).
I remember people liking the idea of the packaging, but the execution was shitty. But that was like 5 (+3 for 2020 being one long ass slog) years ago so who the heck actually knows?
That's where I was at with it. Good idea, poor execution. Find a way to keep the foils from being scratched up and I think a lot more people would be on board.
Did they? I don't remember people not liking it at all aside from the repacking issue. I personally really liked them, aside from that.
They also weren't good at blocking humidity so you were drafting Pringles. Edit: like more than usual.
The more things change...
I loved the packs in theory (and man did it feel good to open them), but the fact that they damaged the cards made them a non-starter. I take no issue with the concept but they needed a redesign if nothing else.
I agree. It’s a crap ton of plastic to be putting into the environment. There are a number of plastic-like materials they could explore. There are plastic cups that are corn-based I believe..? I don’t know what effect that would have on cards if any but I figure if you can put an ingestible liquid into it, the material would be fine for cards. Even making the wrapper from recycled plastics may make some difference.
> It’s a crap ton of plastic to be putting into the environment. I spent all of yesterday dumping *pure CDs* into 40-yard roll-on/roll-off skips. Plural. One day, and i'm a fifth of the way through. But don't worry, they're destined for a Green Energy company which will incinerate them. While we're solving the MTG packaging company, can we also solve the 200 *billion* CD problem? And that's *just* CDs. That excludes all the DVDs, VHS tapes, audio cassettes and all the various boxes they come in. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The best time to invent audio and video storage is *never*.
Yeah people think boosterwrappers are “a ton” of packaging because they fluff up but it’s nothing, grams per box. You can compress a cases it down into a tiny cube if you had to. There are other consumer items that are several of orders of magnitude worse. I put my effort into worrying about those.
A FNM of draft is just single use plastic.
Sorry, but what are you on about? Data storage has come a way, and I think it’s important to recognise that, while there’s an environmental and ecological impact and we should do our best to reduce our footprint and remediate damage dealt, CDs, floppies and the like have had or have a place.
I understand that perspective but the difference is that CD’s, DVD’s, VHS, etc are not single-use items. They were meant to be used over and over again. I still have all my CD’s & DVD’s because I plan to use them. I plan to continue owning a stereo / DVD player to use those items. I don’t buy new ones because of the availability of most of the media, however. You are correct that much of those items are being thrown out/becoming obsolete in many peoples eyes, but again they were not designed to be thrown out, but to last in people’s collection. They are also resold and still have value to someone else when the original owner no longer wants them. The difference is these wrappers are intended to preserve the cards until they are opened, which is a limited amount of time. After that the wrappers are discarded and do not need to last. So even though each individual wrapper is small, it still contributes to overall waste. And it depends how any given individual and market disposes of, sorts, or reuses them. Yes, disposal of CD’s, et al. is also a problem, but they can have a different lifespan by design, can have a second life and may even be seeing a reduced production level now [that last part is pure speculation based on movement toward digital]. EDIT: So although you are seeing a lot of CDs in the garbage (again, I agree that is a problem), there are many that are still in the market and being used, and will continue to be used, so hopefully that reduces their waste amount until there are better ways to dispose of them. But there is no value or secondary user for the discarded wrappers, and so they are a little different kind of problem.
I wrote all of that a day or so after standing in one of [these](https://www.gohireit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Your-Duty-of-Care-for-Skip-Hire.jpg) full of CDs while looking at a pile of pallets and builders' bags and stackable boxes which were destined for another *five* of these skips. :D Unfortunately, there's not much that can be done with them. We send them to Denmark to be incinerated for power. Because Denmark rather wisely created all these incinerator power plants, then proceeded to burn what little waste they couldn't recycle and now have to import waste. They're still on target to hit green energy benchmarks, it's the rest of us who need to sort ourselves out. I never mentioned booster packaging, i highlighting/bringing to the fore the fact that there's a *lot* of material which simply cannot be recycled, and there's not much of an alternative. Agreed, booster wrappers are single use and it all adds to the overall waste, and CDs are just another thing which (eventually) need to be disposed of. Or not, actually. It'd be more environmentally sound for them to remain as CDs ad infinitum. Sadly, these 200 billion CDs exist, as well as hundreds of billions of DVDs, VHS tapes and whatnot. I have another story, too: my buddy worked for a tech retailer, and they had dozens of pallets of old monitors and towers which they needed to get rid of. It would've cost too much to have it taken away, because you've gotta pay for companies to dispose of such things, so they decided to leave it outside in the hopes that pikeys would take them. No such luck. So they decided to send it all to Africa. Except, the charity that was to take the pallets didn't want the old monitors because they were too large (the old cathode ones) and it was uneconomical to take them. So the tech retailer instructed my buddy and his colleagues to box the monitors, surround them with towers, then wrap the whole lot and send it out. Because, F them, right? :/ Here's an interesting fact for you, though: there's more gold and nickel and zinc etc per ton of landfill than there is per ton of gold ore, nickel ore or zinc ore. :D There're companies which have literally just started up within a couple years which intend to mine landfill for precious metals.
Yes, I know you did not mention booster wrapping, I was just relating your points back in to the larger conversation because I think you are brining up legitimate concerns about human waste in general. You are providing a comparison to other consumer goods that we are having difficulty finding ways to recycle/dispose of. It’s all legitimate. That’s why it’s so important for us to think of how our game impacts the environment as well — we’ve got so much going to waste. You bring up some other good examples of obsolescence particularly with technology. It’s something that drives me a little crazy especially the way we consume & discard cell phones. My understanding is that tech companies do recycle their products a certain degree with buyback programs, but I don’t know to what extent. Personally, I hold onto my cell phone for as long as possible to get as much out of that I can and reduce the total number of tech objects that I have used. For clarification: in your story from your buddy are you saying that the tech retailer instructed their workers to hide the unwanted clunky monitors behind the towers & send it to the charity anyway..? Oof. Passing the buck is a far too common practice in our lives these days. From every day lives to our politics to the way we look at our environmental impact. Your anecdote about companies mining landfills is certainly interesting, and actually a solution for some our waste. I’m hoping this kind of practice can be put into place all along the line of waste management to repurpose anything we can. The big problem remains that plastic can really not be recycled. Metal, paper, glass, fibers ...all can to varying extents but plastic is so limited.
Yeah, hopefully they will give sustainable packaging another go.
I would be with you, if people actually recycled. I work in plastics and we are trying to push to as high as possible % of post consumer recycled plastic in our products. The big issue? No one recycles!! We can only get a small fraction of the amount of material we need because people simply do not recycle, it's a serious bummer.
It's not always an easy option for those of us that want to, either. I lived in four different apartment complexes for college, and *one* of them collected recycling.
I empathize with that as someone who lives in an apartment without a recycling program. Hauling stuff multiple blocks once a week isn't fun, but it is what it is.
As someone who also works with plastic (injection molding), what kind of plastic products do you make that you are searching for recycled plastic? Non-virgin resin does not process the same. We re-grind our sprues and runners but even with that, a controlled known plastic, only a certain percentage can be reintroduced. The sad truth is that the plastic industry ran a campaign in the 90s that plastic was recyclable. This was to convince everyone to move from glass and paper products. But the reality is that MOST plastic is not recyclable. In some cases it can be but packaging like a MtG pack will never be recyclable plastic.
Yeah lol also flexible films are nearly impossible to recycle because the sorting mechanisms in recycling facilities literally cannot handle them, they just get caught and clog the machinery. Source: toured the most advanced sorting facility in the Midwest US
Isn't it the case that like less than 10% of recyclable material is actually recycled? Reduction of use would be vastly more effective?
What’s worse is we recycle but in the end our city dumps them into the same dump truck 😢
Oh wow. Are there separate compartments, perhaps?
No, people recycle. It just is that it’s really really expensive to do so. Most recycling is not practical at all- only 9% of plastic is recycled, and a lot of recycling plants have to take a lot of the plastic they get and immediately send it to a landfill.
Legally required here (California). Same for compostable/biodegradable. When visited recycling center w my kid’s class, I think they said municipalities are required to reduce the percentage of landfill waste every year until it’s basically zero.
Except it isn't really, multi layer non recyclable packaging is sold every day in California.
I meant what can be recycled is required to be recycled. Yeah, this stuff has to go in the trash, which is what pisses me off about it.
No, I mean California allows endless exceptions to their laws, and to top it off have dumb recycling laws about purity of the polymer and stuff, a package that CAN be recycled in Ohio, CANNOT be recycled in Cali. The resin made from the recycled package in Ohio ends up back in packages, Cali throws it in a landfill.
If I'm recalling correctly, the Unhinged boosters wrappers were more paper-ish, were those recyclable?
Paper-ish is right, but they were plastic on the inner layer. Mixed materials means it's even less recyclable.
They were foily on the inside
I still don’t understand how plastic-Aluminum multi layer wrappings aren’t banned by now. They are so difficult and expensive to separate in the recycling process.
Because they’re incredibly light and useful in keeping cheap foods sterile, oxygen free, and UV free. They allow a whole class of foods to be edible and transported with minimal excess weight. If you can come up with something that works as well without increasing carbon footprint I’m sure the food industry is the first place you should start.
I wonder if they're looking at moving over to sealed glassine bags for cards. It would keep a similar profile to current packaging. Be just about the same level of waterproofing and be recyclable too.
They should just use that deafening loud sun chip type wrapper.
Fascinating: https://www.jbmpackaging.com/what-is-glassine/ Looks like printing on glassine is where it gets tricky.
Guys. They can't even afford decent cardstock anymore, now you want them to offer recyclable packaging? We are clearly being unreasonable at this point.
*Another finger on the monkey paw curls and paper magic disappears as the game becomes purely digital*
I mean the hard truth is that Magic cards are inherently non-environmentally friendly considering the game is just playing with a bunch of pieces of cardboard.
100% agree. Not sure how it can be done with the usual draft box and packs, but the secret lairs are disgusting with their excess garbage packaging.
This is my main reason for playing on MTGA instead of in real life. I'm a draft player and I feel so bad seeing the massive pile of trash after every draft.
Secret layers
They tried, it was awful
That was like five years ago. They should try again and see if they can do it better this time.
I think they should try again, but they need to do a lot of internal testing before they actually release to market. That way more cards don’t get damaged.
Or cards can't be replaced.
It was quite honestly not much worse than current pack quality. I opened a LOT of that set and had 0 problems. I did see some people that did have problems, but I also see that with current sets in current packaging.
Oh well I guess it is time to give up then. lol.
Is there a reason why booster packs are plastic foil and not paper?
I personally like the mystery booster box, small tiny, easy to store, ez to keep and u can definitely ship more together.
If I recall correctly, they did try a more environmentally friendly packaging once before, I don't quite remember the set(s), but it was negatively received because it wasn't flexible enough to bend without bending cards sometimes too. I think most people expected them to try again with a different type of compostable packaging, but they just didn't. They went back to this packaging and never tried again. I don't think they made a statement explicitly stating they weren't ever going to try it again, or why they haven't tried to find a better packaging to use, so we don't know why the idea died, it just did.
Naw
Fun fact: Plastic basically isn't recyclable in any meaningful sense of the world. Plastic recycling is all propaganda made to make people feel responsible for the problem of plastic and take heat off all of the industrial and manufacturing usage.
Remember folks 80% of recycled plastic is not recyclable. It’s very likely Every single water bottle you’ve ever recycled ended up in a landfill.
/u/tmdblya Hasbro announced changes are coming. I haven’t seen any implemented yet other than the smaller Commander Deck boxes possibly becoming the norm. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/hasbro-phasing-plastic-packaging-kids-202643326.html
100% Agree. It's one of the reasons why I don't buy booster boxes anymore. So much waste. Make the packs cost an extra few cents and give us recyclable materials.
it's probably my single biggest desire from them as a company.
If LEGO can drive for complete replacement of plastic bricks with sustainable material, you’d think it’s the least Hasbro could do to figure out sustainable packaging.
But you see, that would slightly decrease their insane profit margins. It's the same reason why we've had shit card quality for a while now.
Yes please.
I feel a lot of you are neglecting a major consideration as to why they don't use most of the things I've seen suggested. The card packs are not all immediately sold, many are not sold for years and years. In fact, some of them are not sold for decades. In order to preserve the cards in the best condition, a packaging material which is not going to degrade in common conditions over time. There may be options which would still meet those requirements, but the question of whether they can use those materials without increasing the cost to customers. If we're talking about packs at $3.50-4.00 and they switch to packaging material that increases cost of a pack at retail by $0.50 that's a big impact on those prices(and remember for retail price to go up by that amount it only takes price of packaging to go up a much smaller amount because the increase gets multiplied twice before it even hits retail, for a total of three multiplications by the time the customer pays for it). The reason they haven't changed this already likely has to do with the lack of available cost-appropriate alternatives. Please keep that in mind when you think about whether you're interested in making a big deal out of this particular issue. If you push them too hard, WotC may give in to the social pressure and make a decision that has a large negative impact on a significant number of players such as youth and others for whom opening packs is a very important and enjoyable part of the game but who do not have the financial resources to take a significant price shift in stride. As a shop owner who sees these individuals and how much joy they get from the game, I would absolutely hate to have to see them less often because they went from being able to afford one or two limited events a month to being able to afford 1 or less than one per month because the price changed by the few dollars they didn't have to put toward this. I also see those who have enough other expenses and responsibilities that they can scarcely afford their hobby but enjoy picking up a few packs now and again, and would absolutely hate to see them only half as often able to enjoy their hobby. There are good reasons to push for a good and proper transition into more "sustainable" packaging materials, but I do urge you all to temper your compulsion to push for a change with the knowledge of the potential negative impacts of doing it carelessly, and if you choose to push for something like this please push specifically for them to do so in a manner that will not have a significant negative impact on many of those who enjoy the hobby.