I bought another board game last week: Daybreak (English title) or e-mission (German title). I bought it, because it was nominated by the "Spiel des Jahres" jury as one of three "Kennerspiel des Jahres". That is to say that it is a bit more advanced than the more family-friendly basic games of the main award, more suitable for experienced board gamers, while still not being a really heavy game for experts. I've been buying more games of about that weight this year, because they are usually quite suitable for the board game nights in my friendly local games store, with respect to both length of time needed to explain and to play. Now Daybreak/e-mission is a game about global warming, and how to collectively overcome the challenge of climate change. And the recommendation of the award jury turned out to be a good one, it is a very nice cooperative game with good player interaction and flow. But because the theme of the game is so eco-friendly, the makers of the game decided to not use any plastic for the game. Well, no visible plastic, I'm pretty sure the cards are plastic-coated, because they are as smooth as any other game's cards. As a result, the game comes only with a few thin cardboard dividers, which do a horrible job of storing the game, especially if you transport it. There are no plastic bags to put tokens in. And annoyingly the game box is glued shut with paper stickers, which unlike plastic stickers can't be removed without falling to pieces and the broken seal remaining ugly on the box.

In the end, I bought a plastic organizer box to sort the different tokens of my ecological game. Transparent plastic boxes which can be closed for transport and used as token trays during gameplay are simply the best solution for this specific task. The open box the game came in just results in a huge mess when transporting the game, and even smaller cardboard boxes with a lid would be less convenient and more expensive than a plastic organizer "tackle box". And this isn't single use plastic, the game might stay like this in my collection for decades, and will hopefully never end up in an ocean. I'm pretty certain the decision to make this game "no plastic" has zero actual ecological impact, but just makes the default storage solution look too cheap and impractical for a 70 Euro game. Worst of all, I'm sure the makers of the game are feeling really good about their bad packaging decisions, all smug and morally superior.