On 19 February 2019 the European Parliament and ACR+ hosted experts and practitioners from local and regional authorities, training providers, NGOs and academia across Europe.

The event was co-hosted by MEPs Silvia Costa and Simona Bonafè, and aimed to bring together existing practices and key actors of circular economy in education, fostering a Europe-wide debate on circular economy and education that can facilitate and promote international cooperation through knowledge sharing and exchange of good practices.

The event took place in the framework of the Erasmus + CYCLE project, co-funded by the European Commission. The CYCLE project is intended to create a set of tools that improve and develop non-vocational adult trainers (NVATs) training competences that ensure the introduction of circular economy competences in adult training, contributing to the creation of an attractive learning pathway for NVATs and facing the existing gap in this area.

Some takeaways:

• Circular economy should be ambitious beyond material aspects, and strive towards"circular thinking";
• Circular economy competences need to be developed: they are key for a sustainable future;
• Circular economy principles should be mainstreamed at all levels of education;
• Circular economy terminology and measuring tools need to be standardised;
• Public-private partnerships need to be encouraged and forged to connect education and industry.