What Matters to Us - Sustainability at Gibsons

Sustainability at Gibsons - Our Green Game Plan

Minimising our environmental impact is really important for our business. Here are some of the ways we are working to get better at this:

Protecting Trees

We have partnered with One Tribe so for every order that is placed through our website, we make a donation to protect 100sqm of rainforest, the equivalent of five trees.

One Tribe’s work spans far and wide, from protecting Amazonian rainforests, biodiverse habitats, indigenous communities and endangered species. This work is 76x more impactful than planting a new tree. Planting 1 tree will absorb 53.1 kilos of carbon by 2030, yet protecting 20 trees absorbs 3900 kilos of carbon by 2030.

You can read more about this collaboration here.

The Perfect Puzzle Project

Our mission is to make plastic-free puzzles and we have made great progress to reach this goal.  

• By the beginning of 2020, we had removed the shrink-wrap plastic that secured our puzzle boxes and replaced it with bio-degradable stickers, which saves over half a million metres of plastic per year.
• We reduced the size of our puzzle boxes by an average of 29% so that the puzzle pieces fit perfectly inside. We can now fit more puzzles into containers which has reduced our carbon emissions when transporting our products from factory to warehouse.
• We manufacture our jigsaw puzzles in the UK and Europe and they are always transported by road, never plane. This keeps our carbon emissions at one tenth of what they would be if we transported by air.
• We use vegetable-based inks on our puzzle boxes and pieces. Our puzzles are made from is FSC paper and we use the thickest, recycled board available on the market.

We are working to remove the plastic bag that holds our puzzle pieces. This is an integral part of our manufacturing process and is difficult to replace. Whilst we go through our testing, we urge you to recycle this bag at your local supermarket or reuse it to hold your pieces when your puzzle is complete.  

Watch our YouTube video about our Planet-Friendly Puzzles here

Plastic-free Games

We've been working hard to replace all single-use plastic in our games too. Many of them now use paper 'belly bands' to secure playing cards and a cardboard insert has replaced plastic ones. 

Our card games, Out of Order, The Card Game for Rebel Girls and Quirk! are all manufactured in the UK to help reduce our carbon emissions and are secured with sturdy biodegradable clear tabs. These games are entirely plastic free. 

Sustainability at Gibsons HQ

Here are some of the ways we make the Gibsons Head Office a sustainable place to work:

• Our building has solar panels to produce the energy we use.
• We get our milk delivered in reusable glass bottles.
• We use bars of soap and responsibly-sourced toilet paper.
• 80% of our office waste is recycled thanks to First Mile.  
• The 20% of waste that is not recycled is transported to an Energy From Waste facility where it's safely incinerated. The process generates electricity and heat that powers homes in the UK, and by-products residues are used in the construction industry. 
• Our energy is sourced from renewable energy supplier who use sustainable methods such as solar, wind and hydro.
• We use LED energy saving lightbulbs in our office. 
• Our Cycle2Work scheme encourages our team to cycle to work rather than drive. 

The Future

We work with partners who are aligned with our sustainability values, but we know we must do more to understand our complete supply chain and where we can do better.

We are aiming to be B-Corp accredited by 2023, supporting us to meet high standards of social and environmental performance.

We are working on being carbon neutral by the end of 2022, offsetting the carbon we use, whilst embarking on initiatives to reduce our carbon emissions further such as:

• Establishing a European warehouse to reduce transportation and carbon emissions when supplying our European customers.
• Replacing the plastic bag in our puzzle boxes