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Hi All,

unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know about the whole plastic ocean issue. My question is, does anybody know of any company which is being proactive in combatting this? Obviously, most wargames involve plastic miniatures. I'm curious as to whether there is anyone who's tried any non-plastic alternatives, such as the bamboo fibre cups you can now get for hot drinks, as an alternative material for miniatures?

I'm erring towards basing most of my designs on cardboard or laser cut wood, from an environmental standpoint. laser cut scenery is becoming a huge thing, which is good. Has anyone got any other ideas or has heard or seen anything else along these lines?

(I thought this perhaps the most relevant forum for this, but I'm not certain!)

I'm just venturing my thoughts on this, but it's not so much the miniatures (which rarely get thrown out) but the packaging that would likely be the issue.

For ex. I play X-wing, the packaging for ships does a great job of preventing any breakage, but it's a lot of plastic that ends up just being immediately tossed out.

Of course this is beside the point that miniatures are a relatively tiny hobby with little footprint compared to something like skiing or offroading or whatever. But any improvement in game design is at least a small step on this.

Yeah, i am horrified at how much packaging CMON used for their Song of Ice and Fire game. Combined with shipping time from China, I imagine the environmental impact is much higher than the GW equivalent.

In my opinion, it is mostly where the product is manufactured than the actual product.

If the manufacturer is in a country that has environmental laws the product is already taxed to oblivion with "environmental taxes" and the manufacturer has been forced into been eco friendly by the governments regulations, if the product is manufactured in a country that does not have environmental laws even if it is the same, it has greater impact.

As always not been destructive costs more and the bigger the production run the higher the cost.