The parts are only one piece of each sheet
Board-game tokens usually arrive attached to a flat cardboard frame called a punchboard. During production, a cutting die presses the shapes into the sheet, leaving small connections that keep pieces in place for packaging and shipping. Players push the tokens out along those cuts. What remains is a thin, branching frame—the sheet’s skeleton—plus any small scraps that break away.
That leftover is built into the format: the sheet must be large enough to hold the pieces, with room between them for clean cuts and sturdy connections. A token’s visible size therefore understates how much cardboard its production uses. Across many games, those empty spaces and discarded frames add up to substantial scrap.
Why the frames can be hard to recycle
Plain cardboard is generally easier to process than a sheet made from several bonded materials. Punchboards may combine paperboard with printed coatings, finishes, or glued layers. In recycling, paper fibers have to be separated from other materials; strong bonds or coatings can make that recovery more difficult. The frame can look like ordinary cardboard while behaving differently in a recycling stream.
The practical consequence is that removing the tokens does not make the remaining sheet disappear from the product’s footprint. It turns into manufacturing scrap—or, after play, packaging waste—that may not be as straightforward to recycle as its appearance suggests.
