Purpose, People and Planet

PPP is one of the founding principles of Sunny Games. We have big ambitions on changing the world. We do this by bringing a message of cooperation, both through our games (Purpose) and through the way we are doing business (People and Planet). In 2028, we want to be a leading board game brand on all 3 domains. Our vision and long term goals are laid down in our policy document “Sunny Games and a Sustainable Future”.

This page describes where we stand now. We don’t pretend to be complete, we know that we already do more than we can put our finger on. Because conscious business is in the foundation of Sunny Games, sustainable choices are being made on many different levels and domains.

Ideally, we would like to make an overall assesment of the PPP impact of our business. Because we are still a small company it is unrealistic to allocate many resources into this. Our absolute impact is still limited too. But if we can easily make improvements that have the potential to be scaled up in the future, we always want to seize these opportunities.

Purpose

We believe that through cooperation, the result is more than the sum of its parts. We offer this experience through our games.

This is the area where we make the largest, intentional impact on a better world. Our games create a positive ripple for humankind. By playing cooperative games, people find out that cooperation is a key element to improve society.

We also negotiate in a cooperative way, which can also create such a ripple. We strive toward win-win-win. This goes beyond the more common win-win.

We are a member of the worldwide cooperative business network COMMON. See www.common.is for more info.

People

Since the complete production chain is European, labour conditions are always based on safe standards. This might change when we would start producing outside Europe, if possible we will use the same level of standards.

Planet: Energy

We strive towards CO₂-neutral production. Production processes are state of the art and very efficient.

We minimize transport distances for our games. Most of our games are produced in the Netherlands, which is central to our main markets. In some cases, we choose for localised production: our Hungarian games are made in Hungary and we are considering to produce our American games in USA.

Components in our games also are sourced within Europe (Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Germany, Poland, Czech republic).

Planet: Materials

Already in our design process, we focus on conscious and efficient use of materials. We have ample experience in creating great 3D cardboard designs with minimal material use. Any space left on a diecut frame is used for creating free extras, like key chains and mini expansions.

The basic material of our products is cardboard and paper. These materials contain a high percentage of recycled paper. New wood fiber in paper comes from sustainably grown European forests.

The state of the art glue for glueing paper to cardboard is bone glue. Since this is a by product of the meat industry, we see this as an environmentally sound solution for now. Basically we are upgrading a waste stream. In our ideal world, meat consumption will be much lower than nowadays, so we are aware that we might need to switch to plant based glue in the future. However at the moment, such a choice would create an extra burden to the planet.

We strive towards fossil free games. Therefore, we are fading out the plastic in our products. At the moment, some plastics are still used:

• Polyethylene (PE) shrinkwrap to seal the boxes.
• Polyethylene (PE) gripseal bag to hold cards and playing pieces, usually 1 or 2 per game.
• Stack Family and Antarctica have a Polypropylene (PP) spinner.

PE and PP are the 2 best recyclable and non-toxic plastics that exist. For now, this is the best choice. But we are seeking new options. Maybe using a plant based and biodegradable synthetic material. Or a completely different way of creating the same functionality.

Some major publishers are replacing shrinkwrap by 4 small plastic sealing stickers. We hope to do such a thing at some point in time, preferably with stickers made from paper.

Pawn, dice and stands are made from sustainably grown European wood. Dice are made of maple, pawns and meeples of beech. These components are painted in German, Polish or Czech factories with non-toxic paint and lacquer. Some of the “light yellow” games still have PE dice and pawns. These components will be replaced by wood when we transform them into our new format.

More info on our goals can be found in our policy document “Sunny Games and a Sustainable Future”

Latest update: December 2020