The Smart Waste Agency Game (The SWAG) is an edutaining, open-source tabletop and card game. It immerses players into the world of waste types, recycling techniques, and a circular economy – fostering creativity, collaboration, and environmental climate awareness.

The SWA Game development 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 during the Smart Social Regional Conference in December 2024.

2024 alpha Release

The Alpha version was developed in 2024 by a coop of 3 City Administration departments including the local waste cleaner corp., 3 non-profits and 63 Children and Teenager within the documenta City of Kassel, Germany.

Initial Seed Funding for development through direct assignment by Smart City Kassel ended in December 2024.

Impact Goal has been achieved in April 2025. The SWAG is now being used and modified in educational settings.

The visual rich German Game Site, game download for self printing & documentation:

swa.futurespace.org

April 2025 update:

The German non-profit organization Epic Education gGmbH adopted The SWAG as a creative commons into their portfolio of Narrative Adventure Education solutions. I designed an Online Community for non-formal and formal edu multipliers and a platform for Open Educational Resources. Visit the German speaking scaling platform here: https://community.epic-education.eu

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.
Sixty-three children and teenagers, age 7-15, designed Wastemonsters both analog from waste and digitally. They 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.

3 City departments including the Waste Cleaner specialists came out of their silos, meeting once a week in the SWA Online Jour-Fix. 3 non-profit youth .organizations worked together to offer funtastic workshops and holiday SWAGdesign weeks.

So: besides developing, creating and designing a digitanalog Game together, it’s even more about HOW we cooperate as diverse actors, including young people. How we coop, to offer a „Social Product“ for the Common Good.

Creating a playful game together is a safe and tiny living lab, in which we can practice the transformation towards a more cooperative, social smart model – both in our cities and within our European Union.