City-led science diplomacy: Building urban sustainability and resilience at the science-policy interface

If you’re someone who has a reusable coffee cup (and remembers to use it), has a compost at home and regularly engages in meat-free mondays, then you might have heard of the phrase the Circular Economy (CE) before.  While most people assume that the CE is just about recycling (and no shade if you do), it actually goes much deeper than that—in fact, recycling is the last resort when it comes to an ideal CE. To put it simply, the theory behind the CE is about transforming our current linear consumption model (Take-Make-Waste) into a circular one that keeps products and services in use for longer (well, forever) to reduce environmental impact and protect precious natural resources. The benefits of the CE are endless, but in short it enables us all to consume more consciously, without compromising on quality, cost or experience.