The Smart Waste Agency Game (The SWAG) is an edutaining, Open-Source tabletop and card game. A playful narrative to inspire discussion and action in the fields of Recycling & the Circular Economy
In one week to an EU "non-profit status". Wow, what a wild ride and agile sprint. It has been a paradigm hyperjump as well. Last Week: The direct 2024 seed funding ended last December, leaving me with 1.45€ in total assets....
The Smart Waste Agency Game (The SWAG) is an edutaining, open-source tabletop and card game. It uses a playful narrative to inspire discussion and action in the fields of recycling and the circular economy. The alpha has been released in 2024.
2025 "Out of town into EUrope"
In 2025, we aim to take our game out of town and into the European Union. We plan to connect young people from diverse EU countries and cities on our gamified social network, teach the design of waste monster cards, smart waste multi-tools, and tabletop wastelands via local youth organizations, localize the game into different languages and country contexts, and start the exchange about smart waste, zero waste, and recycling in our cities.
Develop and launch the SWAG gamified open-source collaboration social network.
Develop fun educational bonus material
Find a local partner from each of 5 cities in 5 diverse EU countries.
Host a SWAG game design event in each of the 5 cities and connect its young participants via the collaboration network. Begin the exchange about smarter waste, our region-specific recycling, and the possibility space of an EU circular economy.
Bring all participants together in a simultaneously live event stream from all 5 EU cities.
Visit each other during summer holidays?!
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2024 "A different way of co-developing an educational game with Youth Participation + city and non-profit actors"
In the beginning we asked: “How can we be smarter with our monstrous waste and aim for 0 wastefulness?” A pretty smart Elder once said:
“Play is the highest form of research" Albert Einstein
We took him literally and developed a playful Game to explore the question. The Alpha version was developed in 2024 by a coop of 3 City Administration departments including the local waste management corp., 3 non-profits and 63 Children and Teenager within the documenta City of Kassel, Germany. It was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building, via KfW Bank and the Smart City Kassel Model Project. It has been released as an Open Educational Resource under a Creative Commons license. A printed game set shared as an Early Access alpha Version after just 5 agile sprint months on December 5th 2025 during the „Smart Social“ Conference, hosted by the German Ministry of Urban Development. Initial direct funding has ended in December 2024. The 2025+ FunDing is now done via Open Collective, gratefully fiscal hosted under the Open Collective EUrope foundation.
