Badges, Lanyards and Environmental Stewardship

In a previous lifetime (back when I had long hair and was awesome) I ran the environmental education component of an outdoor center. Our job was to provide environmental education to 4th, 5th and 6th graders in central Indiana. For them, the outdoors was a major part of their lives as farming and hunting was a major component of their community, but they hadn’t ever learned about the environment or their impact on it. We would teach about plants, animals and how fragile the ecosystems of the forest or watersheds were and what steps we could do to help lessen our impact on them. 

Jump to today, and now I am part of a team who runs several board gaming events. When we first began our main focus has always been creating a positive community while providing an excellent experience through our events, both of which I think we’ve done a decent job with. But as we grow, we want to continually do what we can to maintain a positive impact on our environment, both inside and out of the ballroom. You have likely seen our Code of Conduct, which we treat as a living document to help us maintain that safe and positive environment at our events that you have come to expect. But we also try to take measures with our decisions and practices when preparing for G2S and our other events where we can have a positive impact on our environment. How you may ask? A few examples we have done:

• Advocacy of water bottles and reusable coffee mugs

• Recycling containers in ball rooms and hallways at the event

• Elimination of paper tickets for drawings in favor of digital entries via QR code on badges

• Reduction in single use signage at events when possible

• Recyclable event badges

• Reuse of lanyards

I’d like to focus on those last two points in a moment, but through these steps, while small is allowing us to make an impact not only environmentally but as a community. The board game community has always been helpful, friendly and conscious minded in all aspects, especially when it comes to the board game industry. When you get 500+ of those people together their impact can be noticeable, and it can be amazing!

Event Badges

If you are like me, you likely will go home following the event and be amp’d for having such a great time with friends new and old, take off your badge and put it on your desk to keep as a remembrance of that great time. For a while. Then you get to cleaning and either tuck it away in a corner where con badges go to die or you throw it away. G2S badges from the get go have been partly recyclable - paper for the badge itself inside a reusable plastic sleeve. This was ok when we got started but we wanted to improve on this. The 2019 badge was an amazing step in the right direction - nice heavy duty plastic badges that not only looked good, but were made of recycled plastics. However they were a number 7 plastic, which while recyclable is not as widely accepted due to the nature of how it is made. Less waste, but not as convenient as we hoped.

So for 2020? Our badges are once again made of recycled plastics, but this time are made from number 1 plastics, which is the most widely accepted of recycled plastic materials in community recycling programs. 

When you are done for the weekend, you can still choose to hold onto your badge, but now you have the option to recycle instead of squirreling it away or just throwing it out.

Lanyards

The lanyard is one of the most widely used item of any con, as everyone is to have their badge readily displayed for all to see. However, much like the event badge, once the con is done you don’t have much use for it (until the next con). So what do you do with it? Again like me you may take it home with you and leave it attached to your badge until you are cleaning and need to do something with it. Perhaps you add it to the growing rat nest of lanyards you’ve collected over the years, or you just simply throw it away.

We will always make lanyards available to attendees at G2S, but this year we wanted to encourage attendees to bring their own. Perhaps you have a favorite you bought at Pax East or Gen Con, or maybe you have a purple one from last year's G2S. Bring it with! Show us that you brought your own and we will enter you into a special drawing for bringing your own as a “thank you”. If you don’t bring your own, that's ok - at the end of your last day at Granite Game Summit, return your lanyard to us at the registration desk. As a thank you you’ll be entered into that drawing as if you brought your own.  Following the event we will draw a winner for a 2021 G2S pass. Note - One entry per person, regardless of how many lanyards you return and/or wear.

End of the day, what we try and focus on is doing better. Trying to lessen our impact environmentally in the little things we do when running an event like Granite Game Summit is just one of those ways. If you can help us with that, then even better.