Is There ‘Green-Gaming’?

11th Nov 2025

Barry

5 mins

Have you ever had that moment when you’re opening a board or tabletop game and think, “geez there’s a lot of garbage?”

I’m talking about all the extra plastic – like the shrink wrapping cards, enough small resealable plastic bags to make police suspicious of your activities, and the evil clam-shell plastic packages. Every single time there would be a wave of the old X-Wing first edition, I’d feel a pang of guilt about just how much garbage I’d accrued – most likely just for some upgrade cards (stupid Autothrusters).

I’m not trying to be preachy, but I do often think about how much waste my hobby produces – and I wonder (occasionally) if the game really needed miniatures, or a specific packaging, or more plastic bases, pegs, or other accoutrements. When it’s all said and done there’s a big pile of plastic – which I’d like to think will get recycled but statistically it probably doesn’t.  

And while the packaging for some games improved reducing the amount of waste (like X-Wing 2.0 releases) or don’t require you to buy multiple instances of thing, my hobby along with a lot of other facets in my day-to-day life leaves me wondering what to do with all this plastic. Is there a way to deal with this?

Is there – to coin a phrase – green tabletop gaming?

There’s lots of boardgames with environmental themes sure, but the very premise of mass production of board or tabletop games means its unlikely to be environmentally sustainable – and making some kind of eco friendly products will probably cost more than people are willing to pay.

While there are some things that we can do – if you’re so inclined – like re-using or upcycling game components for other games. But this is something that is actually on publishers to solve and probably should be incentivised to do, producing games with sustainable materials like recycled paper, FSC-certified wood, and /or biodegradable components, and avoiding plastic and unnecessary shrink-wrap.

That doesn’t completely solve the problem with our miniature games – though I have often thought about how for games like X-Wing, Armada, Attack Wing and others if miniatures are honestly all that important? I mean they don’t functionally do anything but they do sell the game. I’d be keen to see if miniatures made from PLA (a plant-based plastic) is possible or financially viable.

There’s also the question of whether games on things like Kickstarter should be providing cardboard components and just selling the STL files for people who want them. Arguably reducing the production cost and schedule.

And look, this isn’t a problem I’m looking to solve here – logically I also consider that while I have all this plastic occasionally the product is something that I use for years in most instance. Unlike my weekly grocery shop which even fresh vegtables are conveniently provided in more plastic.

Rosco has shown a way to re-use or repurpose old game pieces for role-playing games like Star Trek Adventures, using old Hero-Clix minis for ships. A combination of Imperial Assault, X-Wing and Armada miniatures could cover all bases in the Star Wars roleplaying games. But outside of this, the only other option is re-gifting games to give them a second life with a gaming or hobby group.

I don’t really have out…so… stay salty? And recycle I guess?

- Barry