Green Mages: How to Make Your Magic Habits More Sustainable in 2024
The new year. A time of refresh that we welcome with open arms and renewed convictions to improve our lives. From commitments to exercise regularly to promises made to spend less time on our phones, most goals set at the new year tend to focus on what we can do for ourselves. But what if we changed that paradigm? What if we set some goals on how we can decrease the impact we have on the planet?
Welcome back to Green Mages the article series exploring the intersection of sustainability and Magic: The Gathering. This week I want to look forward to 2024 and help us all find ways that we can make our relationship to this great game a little bit more green. For the purposes of this list, I am going to narrow the focus to what we as individual consumers can do, not on initiatives that Hasbro/Wizards can take despite those likely being the most impactful.
If we want them to make more large-scale changes, we can start by showing them that we as a community care about the impact our game has on the planet and change our consumption patterns to align with our desires.
Less is More
In my past life I worked in the clean energy industry. The company I worked for focused on rooftop solar and home energy efficiency upgrades (insulation, duct sealing, the works). A common adage used around the office was, "The cheapest (and greenest) form of energy is the energy you don't use," which is a statement that holds true. Better than solar, better than wind, better than any alternative is simply just using less energy overall. The same is true of Magic cards.
The greenest Magic card is the one that you never purchase.
The first and biggest thing you can do as a member of this community to decrease your environmental footprint is to buy fewer Magic cards. There is a fallacy perpetuated out there that basically the stuff has already been made, so it doesn't matter if I buy them or not, and that is simply not true. While it may be true in the short term, in the long term if we all buy fewer cards, Wizards will manufacture and ship fewer cards. Unsold stock is a major issue for a company like Wizards (and the toys/games industry in general), and now more than ever they're going to be watching inventory numbers closely.
If you want to learn more about the impact that shipping Magic cards across the world has, you can check out the previous entry into the "Green Mages" series here!
Wait Before You Buy
I know that the previous suggestion is a big ask, and to expect you to not purchase any cards throughout the year is neither reasonable nor fair, so my next suggestion is to buy your cards in more concentrated chunks.
If you're anything like me, your Magic-buying habits look a little bit like this: you're watching the latest episode of your favorite Commander show, reading an article, or simply just scrolling Twitter (I am still in denial about its change to "X") when you see a card that is perfect for one of your decks! You run over to TCGPlayer or whatever your preferred shopping network is and find that the card price is fairly reasonable. You throw it in your cart because surely the price is about to skyrocket since every other person in the world saw the same bit of content you did and will be clamoring for the card!
You quickly hit Buy Now.
Crisis averted. You beat the rush and secured the card before the price could spike. You then resume consuming whatever content you were before the mad dash for new cardboard only to find them display a second card that you HAVE to have.
Next thing you know you have three separate envelopes from three separate places all showing up in your mailbox. That means three separate journeys for each envelope as opposed to one singular journey. Three times the journeys, three times the carbon footprint. Even though the impact of a single letter is only about 10-20 grams of CO2, that can definitely add up over time, not to mention the paper and plastic waste associated with shipping.
My suggestion for 2024 is to take the foot off the gas pedal and slow down the purchasing process. When you see a new card that you HAVE to have, put it on a list and then revisit that list at the end of every two weeks, every month, whatever interval your decide, and then purchase them all together. Not only will this have the cards come in one singular package, but through this you will also realize you might not need all of those cards, helping your fulfill the first suggestion on this list.
Buy Local
A quick one here, but another way to make your Magic consumption habits more sustainable is to buy local. I know this isn't an option for everyone, but if you have a local game store in your area buying local has a smaller footprint overall and can help stimulate you local economy (dollars spent on local institutions get reinvested locally at a rate of almost 2:1).
Another option is to trade for cards. Trading is a great way to give new life to cards you already own and aren't using. My local game store here in New York City has a discord channel that they host where people can set up trades before even coming to the shop.
Keep Accessories in Use
One aspect of the game I tend to not think about often are the accessories I use in order to play the game: sleeves, deck boxes, playmats, dice, etc. All of these have footprints to consider.
The two big ones that I see cycled through quickly are sleeves and deck boxes. One way to decrease your footprint is to keep accessories you have already own in circulation longer. I know for competitive play, having clean unmarked sleeves is critical, but for more casual formats like Commander, your sleeves can be a little more beat-up. Play with them for an extra few months, I promise it will be okay. If you do play competitively and go through sleeves regularly, maybe try and find a friend you can donate your lightly used sleeves to.
The same is true for deck boxes. There are always new and cool boxes showing up on the market, but if you already have a box for your deck, keep using it! Get more life out of the thing you have already purchased. The longer our items stay in use, the less impact they have. (If you're in need of a new deck box, though, I would suggest checking out the Ultimate Guard Return to Earth Boulder. It is the most environmentally conscious one I have found.)
Try Before you Buy
My last suggestion is a pseudo-extension of the first and that is to playtest a deck before you buy it. Let me paint a picture of a situation I think many of us have experienced:
A new set is on the horizon and a commander is previewed that has your name written all over it! You spend days brewing, tinkering, perfecting a list that will soon give life to your perfect new commander. You rush to get the list ordered just in time for the set to release so you can play with your new brew as soon as possible. Then it's game time. You sit down with your playgroup or at your LGS and pull out your new beauty. You draw the perfect seven and get into the game... only to find out that the deck doesn't really play like you'd hoped. In fact, you didn't really enjoy the deck much at all. You tinker, adjust, keep trying, but eventually the deck finds itself scrapped at the back of your closet never to see the light of day again.
For me this happened with Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer. I was so excited for morphs to be back and knew this deck would be the one for me! Turns out it got scrapped after only a few games.
All this trouble could have been saved had I tested the deck out first. With amazing sites like Moxfield and Archidekt, you can build a deck and then playtest the deck from the same site and get a feel for the deck before you have to buy anything, before you have to have anything shipped and before any real impact is ever had (even if there is a digital footprint, it's comparatively negligible). You can even use these sites to play on Spelltable if that's where you primarily play!
What Change Do You Want to See?
While this list is far from comprehensive, I think it's a good look into easy changes we can all make that will decrease our collective footprint on the planet. I myself am setting a goal to slow down and play more games before upgrading my Commander decks as a way to buy fewer cards.
Do any of these goals resonate with you? What changes are you looking to make in 2024 to decrease your environmental footprint? Please let me know in the comments below!
Thanks for joining for another edition of Green Mages. If there are any sustainability topics you would like me to dive into more, please let me know here in the comments or on Twitter @QuintonMac17!
