In a bid to bite into the mass of plastic produced for the purposes of video game packaging, Sports Interactive and parent company Sega have introduced what they believe to the world’s first fully recyclable casing. Football Manager 2020 will be wrapped in a cardboard sleeve rather than the typical hard plastic casing, with the companies hoping to inspire others to follow their lead.
According to an open letter penned by Sports Interactive Studio Director Miles Jacobson, the cases for video games require around 55 g (1.9 oz) of plastic apiece. The company is looking to avoid all of that with what it says is the most environmentally friendly packaging it has ever produced.
The cardboard sleeve will be made with 100 percent recycled fibers, while the inks used will be vegetable and water-based and the manual inside made from recycled paper. The shrink wrap used for shipping is also recyclable, meaning that all the packaging can be recycled at the end of the product’s life (recycling the disc itself my require some extra effort).
Jacobson says this will cost more, around 20 cents (British) extra a pop, but this could be offset by the fact that it is much lighter and therefore should be cheaper to transport. By packaging every copy of Football Manager 2020 in this way, he expects to save around 20 tonnes of plastic this year alone, a figure based on expected sales of that particular title, but one that could balloon into something much more if it inspires others to take a similar approach.
“But we’re not interested in being the only people doing this,” he writes. “So I’m throwing down the gauntlet here to ALL entertainment companies who use plastic for their Blu Ray, DVD and CD packaging. Imagine how much plastic we could save, how much landfill we could avoid and how much less plastic would make it into the oceans if we were all do this?”
You can see Jacobson speak about the packaging alongside Spanish and Arsenal footballer Héctor Bellerín in the video below.
Source: Sports Interactive