SAZKA

Scratch cards have been a popular form of entertainment among the Czech people for several generations. Sazka is the first lottery company in the world to give scratch cards a second life. The reLosy platform seeks out opportunities and new ways to recycle and upcycle scratch cards and is striving to draw attention to the topic of sustainability and circularity through innovative designer items. The reLosy project has now come up with a collection of designer products made from lottery tickets. The products also emphasise Sazka’s strong connection with sports and the sporting community.

Sazka is behind the project. The company collaborates on the products with leading Czech designers, universities and other entities. We also want to involve our customers in the project by offering them the possibility of returning non-winning scratch cards at our retail stores. 

Paper is an excellent and undervalued material and Sazka wants to find and use opportunities for recycling and upcycling so that as many scratch cards as possible have a chance for a new life. The overall goal is to promote sustainability and circularity. At Sazka, we have been recycling returned scratch cards (winning and unsold) in an environmentally friendly manner for over 20 years. The material is subsequently used, for example, to make egg cartons. However, we are looking for other ways to process large quantities of lottery tickets in a meaningful and sustainable way and to give them a second life so that they can continue to bring joy. One solution is upcycling, which replaces the purchase of new products and instead puts the waste material to valuable use.

Sazka is the first lottery company in the world to upcycle its scratch cards. The company’s vision is scalability of its products to the public space and other high-volume uses.

Sazka is not a manufacturing company and, thanks to the relocation of its offices to the Bořislavka complex, it does not have a major impact on the environment. It has received LEED Gold certification thanks to, for example, rainwater harvesting, energy recovery from lifts and a heat exchanger. But we sell a lot of paper – scratch cards – and we want to continue to manage the amount that we have under our control in a sensible way. We have been recycling the lottery tickets with an external partner for over 20 years and we are looking for further solutions that will enable us to continue to sustainably process the material. One of the options is upcycling.

We are looking for other solutions for processing the material, which we have a lot of, in a sensible way. Upcycling is another step toward reducing our environmental impact. At the same time, we want to bust the myth that upcycled products are not very nice and show that they can instead be stylish and high-quality. 

Recycling involves the processing of waste by breaking down the given waster materials and reusing them individually to produce other products. Examples include old newsprint that is used to make new paper of lower quality or paper products such as envelopes, toilet paper and cardboard boxes. Upcycling involves transforming waste materials or old items into new products with higher value. Examples include old wooden pallets from industrial warehouses, which can be transformed into new furniture, such as tables, sofas and shelves. 

At the end of the year, we will present the first upcycled certified BMX pumptrack at the Life! experience festival in Brno. At the same time, we are discussing with the pumptrack manufacturer the possibility of using certified material from scratch cards in mass production. We are preparing other items for the public space, which will raise awareness of the possibilities of recycling. And we will involve our customers – in the summer we will launch a pilot project in which we will give them the opportunity to return non-winning lottery tickets at selected points of sale. The lottery tickets will then be given a new life by Sazka and its reLosy platform.

Designer sneakers made from vegan apple leather, with a soles made from upcycled Sazka lottery tickets.

The sneakers were created in collaboration with Naut, the design studio founded by Tish Seabrook and Filip Nguyen.

Two hundred pairs were created and the shoes cannot be bought, as they can only be won in competitions on Instagram.

The shoes are made from eco-friendly vegan apple leather with Greenguard Gold certification. The soles are made from  upcycled scratch cards.

The upper scratch-off layer is washable and durable, so it can withstand normal wear and tear.

The modular designer furniture is 70% made from Sazka scratch cards – this is the largest possible percentage of scratch tickets that could be used with a focus on robustness, durability and outdoor placement. The remaining 30% comprises soft recycled plastic.

The designer Filip Krampla.

We plan to use the furniture in the context of events; in the future, it could also appear in relaxation zones for attendees of various sporting or cultural events. We update events regularly here on the website in the Sazka Modular Furniture section. We are also looking at ways to further scale this product into the public space. We believe that in this way we will also be able to naturally draw attention to the topic of sustainability and upcycling.

The Reborn Design project excited us with its innovative vision of connecting students and companies for the benefit of sustainability and creativity. We look forward to hearing more ideas on what products we can further upcycle the lottery tickets into.

A total of 124 students are involved.

The announcement was made on 18 June 2024. The winner of the “paper” category and the overall winner of the competition was Václav F. Matyáš with his MOTMAL project involving deodorising eco-pucks made from Sazka scratch-off lottery tickets.

We are already working on other interesting and design projects. we want to upcycle the material from the scratch cards in large volumes. In the next phases, we will engage our customers and, at the same time, we are looking for new opportunities and partnerships for the further use of the material from lottery tickets.