Lottery sets an environmentally friendly precedent

By Kate Northrop

The Québec Lottery announced last week that they have just launched the first-ever lottery ticket printed on entirely recycled materials.

It's the Lottery's latest step toward a reduced environmental footprint and the first time that any lottery corporation in the world has released a ticket made completely from recycled materials.

The environmentally friendly ticket is from the scratch-off game "Évasion," which was just issued earlier this month. For $3 a ticket, the game offers 1 in 566,667 odds of winning the grand prize of $10,000.

To accomplish their goal of producing the ticket while promoting the local economy, the Lottery enlisted the help of two of its partners based in Québec.

According to a press release, the scratch-off tickets are printed with environmentally friendly, water-based inks at Scientific Games' highly secure Montréal instant game manufacturing facility, while the recycled materials are produced by Rolland, an eco-friendly printing paper supplier in Saint-Jérôme.

Other Québec Lottery products are made in part with post-consumer materials, and all of its tickets are recyclable.

"A reminder that the majority of Loto-Québec scratch tickets are FSC-certified," the Lottery said in a press release. "FSC labels deliver a guarantee to consumers that the products they buy support responsible forest management, and that the products are handled correctly at every stage of production — from forest to shelf."

The Lottery doesn't plan on stopping its green initiatives here. Players can look forward to similar scratch-off tickets in the future that will also be made from 100% recycled materials.