CESchools showed how schools could be a major player in promoting circular economy approaches by engaging their students to be their speakers in raising awareness in our society. We demonstrated how human resources and initiatives were very important in embracing CE in each country. The project has provided solutions to one of the biggest challenges the EU (and the world) is still facing: promoting a Circular Economy mentality and helping it seep into institutions and society to generate real change. At a smaller scale, industries and educational institutions could boost this shift towards integrating CE in all areas of society. Specifically, this project has provided: (1) Tangible, durable results: Created collaborations between educational centers and private institutions. (2) Long-term impact: Promoted and encouraged CE thinking among schools; that is, "planted the seed" for future generations who would grow and adapt their habits to ultimately create the biggest expected impact. (3) Long-lasting outcomes: Developed new and innovative hidden curriculum techniques which has been and could be used by other countries, not just the ones that participated in this consortium.
We have seen a great rise in the need to embed Circular Economy into today's society. This project embeds to main challenges which were fully approached: How can we save the environment and maintain a sustainable economy at the same time. Through CESchools, we have used the ultimate principles of Circular Economy "reduce-reuse-recycle" and applied it to a larger scale, making it so students are pioneers in their classrooms and in their lives. Since the proposal, nothing has really changed regarding our approach: For the realization of these principles, there were many important players in our society, including our schools. Schools represent an area of particular interest for circular economy (CE) implementation due to their socio-economic relevance for the service sector and their influential role in supporting sustainable development in cities and regions worldwide.Schools contributed to economic progress and social well-being through knowledge creation and dissemination (research and teaching) and community development (outreach activities).