Sega Europe will no longer use plastic packaging for many of the games that it publishes in 2020 and beyond. The newest set of packages will be manufactured from completely recycled materials, and eliminate single-use plastics as well. The cases themselves are fully recyclable as well so that they can easily be reused for future products. This does drive up the price of products a bit, but it seems like Sega is making an effort to trade the health of the planet for a bit less profit.
There are some other details that are worth mentioning as well. According to Rock Paper Shotgun, Sega will be cutting back the costs of distributing its products to compensate for the increased costs. Total War: Rome II’s upcoming Enemy at the Games Edition will be the first mainline title within the Sega brand to make this adjustment. It remains to be seen if more titles from Creative Assembly and the like will make this changeover as well. As of now, all Sega PC games within the Sega Europe brand will go by this policy of recycled packing and reducing distribution costs.
The company has committed to bringing some increased environmental responsibility to the gaming industry. Sega Europe already made the switch to recycled package manufacturing within some of its subsidiaries. Sega’s Sports Interactive branch was the first to make this change, saving an estimated 20 tons of plastic in manufacturing as a result of this change.
The overall construction of the packages within this effort is pretty ingenious. The ink is made from water and vegetable products, using less synthetic sources. A film made of low-density polyethylene wraps the case shell, adding a layer of rigidity while using a much lower concentration of oil-based products. The disks remain as the biggest hurdle to fully recyclable video games, as the mixture of plastics and special metals take a bit of work to reprocess. Who knows, maybe the video game industry will catch on and more publishers will push this kind of an initiative.
