Replay Workshop: Reducing Our Plastic Gaming Waste

Acknowledging and accepting some hard truths is the first step to move forward. If you are a tabletop, board, card, or miniature gamer, then the uncomfortable and hard truth is that all of us are part of an industry that has created a lot of waste. Whether you’re punching out tokens from a sheet, ripping open a booster pack, or trimming pieces off a sprue, every unused bit has ended up in the trash in one way or another. That’s just the box they come in, too. There are shipping materials for the boxes and cases, fuel for manufacturing and shipment, and lots of little production flotsam that gets lost and ultimately thrown out along the way. Some of us may be a little more conscientious about recycling cardboard or using leftover sprues for game parts or terrain, but the harsh truth is that our hobby industry generates a lot of waste and generally negatively impacts our environment. We love our hobbies, but how can we continue to partake if it’s damaging the world around us? 

Replay Workshop

Replay Workshop is taking large strides into the realm of recycling game waste and creating net zero gaming waste. They are an arm of Atlas Games that crafts quality game accessories and components from local plastic waste. Components include bases, trays, paint holders, dice, and even their game line of puzzle tiles, InFUNity.

Their team at the prototyping workshop sorts, shreds, and processes the recycled plastic. Take the tour here to learn more about the work they do and how they rescue plastic from congesting the landfills.

As a hobbyist, you can actually mail (or drop off, if you’re local to them) a box of sprues. While the cost is on you to mail it to them, it’s a small price to pay for helping reduce the waste buildup. You also will receive 10% off your next online order, if it includes at least one Replay Workshop item. Stores and companies can also send Replay Workshop sprues. If you’re interested in learning more about the sprue recycling program you can read about ithere: 

Sprues Recycling

Have your miniatures sprues RECYCLED into new Replay Workshop game accessories by Atlas Games!

Atlas GamesAtlas Games

GamingTrend met with them at GenCon this year and got introduced to Replay Workshop’s mission and a few of their products they’ve produced using the recycled material. Their catalogue is small, but mighty, and they are working on adding more universal game products to reach as many corners of the gaming hobby as they can. 

Replay Workshop

Atlas Games’ line of game accessories made from upcycled plastic waste.

Atlas GamesAtlas Games

Recycled Plastic Terrain Tiles

We received some bases, movement trays, and terrain tiles to sample, and so I took the opportunity to paint up the terrain tiles to use in my games. I have been painting lots of terrain for many different games and so I applied the same process to the ‘Terrain Tile Cobblestone’ pack. These 4x4 boards of 1” squares are perfect for a role-playing game set up, or for floor tiles to place adjacent to some buildings/walls for a tabletop miniature game. 

After doing a quick soap water wash on them to remove the release agent (from manufacturing), they were ready to go. No filing, scraping, or trimming was needed to get them ready for paint.

Painting was the simplest part. I primed them with a Rust-Oleum Flat Gray Primer, drybrush a light gray-white, and then applied random spots of Citadel Contrast Paint and Army Painter Speed paint to various squares, using brown, tan, and flesh tones to provide a little variety. After it all dried, I sealed them up with a Krylon Matte Finish Spray to remove the gloss and give them a real matte stone look to them. 

That’s it! 30 minutes in total paint time from priming to sealing. They look great on the table, and you get enough detail in them to make them stand out on the table without causing pieces to sit unevenly on them. This is an absolutely great piece of terrain… and it’s 100% recycled.

Impressions

I would feel a little - no, a lot less guilty about my hobby if I knew I was using recycled products to make great tabletop gaming pieces and making as minimal of an impact on the environment as possible. In my daily life, I try to recycle and repurpose as much as I can, but the reality is that we live in a consumerist society that produces more material to get the product to us than the product itself provides. As a miniature painter, I don’t enjoy playing with gray and so I paint as much as I can. If I was painting up my 3D printed D&D miniatures, I would not care in the least if the bases were made of multi-colored recycled plastic. In fact, I would almost exclusively buy recycled bases if I could. If Replay Workshop ever starts developing game-agnostic terrain, whether it’s gothic science fiction, early 20th century Northern Europe brick houses, or just modern city scapes, you can bet that they will be acquired and featured prominently on my gaming table. 

Join their mailing list today. Contact them about recycling. Get involved. Help keep the hobby sustainable so we can continue to play the games we love on the planet we want to protect. 

Have you played played with or painted any Replay Workshop products? What other ways are you helping reduce waste and either recycling or upcycling materials? Let us know! Don't forget Follow GamingTrend for more board and miniature game reviews and articles!