Our Process
Manufacturing Facilities
Our first two games, Teflarok and Pack o’ Dogs, were manufactured by PrintNinja, a Chicago based company with a factory in Shenzhen, China. We have been assured by Print Ninja that the factories are "... comparable in terms of neatness and safety to what you'd see in a domestic press: The workers are all adults, many of them with college educations in printing. In addition, Shenzhen has one of the highest minimum wages in China." Unfortunately, we will not continue to work with PrintNinja for the foreseeable future due to their 500 quantity minimum. They are a great company and we loved working with them, we just simply are too small of a business to order 500 copies of each game.
Our upcoming games will be manufactured by BoardGamesMaker & MakePlayingCards (two divisions of the QP Group). They are a print-on-demand (no order minimum) company based in Hong Kong with two state of the art facilities in Dongguan and Heshan, China. According to them, they are “world renowned and trusted not only for our industry leading turnaround time and quality but also on our reliability and safety records.” and have multiple accreditations for business practices, quality, and safety.
CPSIA Compliant
Per the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), all games sold in the US intended for players younger than 13 have undergone third-party testing, certifying them CPSIA compliant. This means they are lead free & phthalate free (specific phthalates tested for: DEHP, DBP, BBP, DINP, DIDP, & DnOP). It is highly unlikely that any of our games not tested contain any of these chemicals, since they all are made from the same types of materials and in the same factories as the games that are compliant. However, we can not legally claim this unless testing is done for each batch of every game. The cost to get this test done is not cheap, so we only do it when legally necessary (games for kids younger than 13).
Our CPSIA Compliant Games: Pack o’ Dogs
Plastic Usage and other Environmental Concerns
The Company & Shipping
All printer paper used in our business is 100% recycled paper, the shipping labels are made with 100% sugarcane bagasse (the leftover waste after the sugar has been extracted), the packing tape is made from 50% recycled materials, and all protective packing materials (bubble wrap, air bags, paper, etc) are exclusively reused material saved from packages we have received. No new bubble wrap is ever purchased. When we run out of our packing tape and bubble wrap we will look into compostable options.
The shipping boxes are currently USPS flat rate, made from post-consumer materials. USPS plastic bubble mailers may occasionally be used. We hope you will reuse or recycle your shipping boxes and filler materials. Please recycle all “plastic film” where accepted (the bubble wrap, air bags, and bubble mailers). They are often not allowed in your curbside recycle bin, so look for places that accept “plastic film”. Often food stores will have a drop-off spot for their shopping bags (check with them first that they accept other plastic films). We will switch to compostable or all paper mailers in the future if we are able to, however, shipping with USPS flat rate (which requires their own packaging) is by far the cheapest option for us currently.
The Games
Our first two games, Teflarok and Pack o’ Dogs, have plastic shrink-wrap around the decks of cards and the box. Please recycle where “plastic film” is accepted (see above). Our future games will arrive with as little shrink-wrap as possible. Instead of the whole box being wrapped, it will be kept closed with two small compostable sticker seals (from ElevatePackaging). These stickers can be placed in industrial composting or home composting. If this is not available to you, place in the trash. Decks of cards will be contained in paper tuck boxes instead of plastic wrap when able.
All games made with BoardGamesMaker will have FSC-certified playing cards, tuck boxes made with 100% recycled paper, and two-piece boxes made with 100% recycled chipboard.
Our 100% Plastic Free Games: CoGNaC