Episode 7 Katie Whalen – fun and games with the circular economy

In this podcast, In the Loop founder Katie Whalen  talks to Catherine Weetman about using games to make the circular economy understandable, engaging and fun.Katie has developed two circular economy games:* In the Loop®, explores circular economy concepts and strategies* Risk and Race, about circular business models and their impact on business performance.We talk about how Katie’s background led to her designing circular economy games, some of the companies she is impressed by, and the need to look out for ‘greenwashing’. If you're in the UK and you'd like to discuss using the In the Loop boardgame, or Barry Waddilove's system design game mentioned in the podcast (and featured in Catherine's award-winning book), please get in touch.You can read a summary of the podcast, and find the links to the people, organisations and other resources we mention later on this page. About Katie Whalen Katherine (Katie) Whalen researches business aspects of circular economy at Lund University as part of MISTRA REES, a Swedish research program on the circular economy.She is involved in education at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics, teaching courses on eco-design to undergraduate and master’s students.Her interests include business model innovation, entrepreneurship, and game-based learning. Katherine is the founder of In the Loop Games AB, which aims to make education for sustainable development understandable and fun.  Recently, she launched Getting In the Loop, a weekly podcast dedicated to exploring our progress to a more circular society. What we talk about [00:00] Katie tells us how she started by studying ship design in the United States, followed by industrial design at TU Delft in the Netherlands, before moving on to do a PhD at Lund University in Sweden.Katie was introduced to the circular economy by Professor David Beck at TU Delft, and was inspired by the idea of rethinking how we use products, rather than designing them to just ‘be a bit less bad’.Katie’s first job was at consultancy Circle Economy, leading their circular design program.Circular economy games[05:18] Katie explains how the idea for the In the Loop game emerged from her studies at TU Delft, where she realised that the complexity of the circular economy sometimes put people off.  Could she make the topic more accessible (and help engage people) by making a circular economy game?The circular economy game she developed, ‘In the Loop’, features twelve of the resources classified as ‘Critical Materials’ by the European Union.  Many of these are used in technology products, such as smartphones.[09:50]  Katie tells us a bit about how the game works, and how it helps people to think about the resource risks their business might face, and possible circular economy strategies that can reduce these risks.[14:51 We talk about Barry Waddilove’s circular economy system design game, featured in Catherine’s Circular Economy Handbook.  Through using this game with companies, Barry discovered the value of discussing linear and circular strategies with functional teams first, before consolidating the findings for the organisation as a whole.