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The Smart Waste Agency Game (The SWAG) is an open-source tabletop card game and an adaptable Open Educational Resource.  The Game immerses players into the world of waste types, recycling, and “the Circular”  – fostering creativity, collaboration, and climate awareness.

Created & Facilitated by:

Year 1 Summer
Anniversary
Edition

The SWA Game was developed in 2024 by a “cooperative for a season” consisting of of 3 City Administration departments including the local waste cleaner corp., 3 non-profit Youth organizations and 63 Children and Teenager. Creative Production and coop facilitation by André Boeing from ktopia.eu. The SWA Project was assigned to Ktopia and funded by the the Smart City Kassel Model Project via the German Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building and the KfW Bank. It has been released as an Open Educational Resource under a Creative Commons license during the Smart Social Regional Conference in December 2024. German Gamesite, Documentation, Partners: https://swa.futurespace.org/ . Initial funding ran until December 2024.

The SWAG is an independent, international branch fork of the initial SWA Game, launched in January 2025 by ktopia.


We began our co-development journey in 2024 with the Question:
“How can we become smarter with our monstrous waste and aim for 0 wastefulness?”

Our leading Motto has been the smart Albert Einstein quote “A Game is the highest form of research!

We took his words literally and developed a game as a playful research tool to explore the question.

We invited Sixty-three children and teenagers, age 7-15, to design Wastemonsters both analog from waste and digitally. They painted and sculptured from waste, graphic-designed the game cards and elements, prompted via text-to-image AI, designed and 3D printed game figures, developed game rules, and released playable test versions.

Visit the  Development Journey and Photo Story here.

Waste Problems became Waste Monsters

Each waste type represents a monster type with specific environmental dangers if not recycled

Recycling methods became Smart Multi-Tools

Each Mod installer represents a miniature method of how the specific waste type is usually being recycled

“Waste Maker” became “Smart Waste Agents”

From passive “Waste Producer” to active Smart Waste Agent representing the hands-on response to our global waste challenge

And the “Wastelands” of our City became our game board…

But we are not done yet…

our 6 “r” of smarter wasting: reduce, reuse, repair, recycle, respect, respond

Continue with the narrative page “about the game”. KLICK HERE