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The EU Circular Economy vision: a powerful force for climate action - Evaluation report

At the same time as the Paris Agreement was signed in December 2015, the European Union launched its Circular Economy Package, a transformational drive to create an economic system that is restorative and regenerative by design. In a circular economy, there is no place for waste. End of life products, materials, nutrients and water feed into a new use cycle thereby minimizing the use of virgin resources, associated emissions and energy use. Since then, the European Union has raced ahead with specific legislation and measures and achieved many key milestones including tabling single plastic use bans in May 2018. Taken together the measures are estimated to save 450-600 million tonnes CO₂-equivalent emissions/year, over 1% of global emissions. This is roughly equal to the whole of Australia’s annual emissions.

About the speaker

Since March 2015, Caroline Lambert is the European Union's Climate and Environment Counsellor in Australia. Before being posted to Australia, Caroline worked for five years in the private office of the European Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard, where she advised on financial, trade and taxation matters and adaptation policy. Caroline entered the European Union's civil service in 2000 and initially worked in the Energy, Transport, Communications and Budget Departments. Early in her career, Caroline did strategic communications and public affairs work in the energy and environment sector for European businesses and commodities. She holds a post-graduate diploma in European Political Science from the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium) where she was awarded first prize of the year. She has a MA with highest honors in International Relations, Economics and Law from Sciences Po Paris and graduated in International Economics from Paris X University.