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Hey everybody, I'm Kie Rizdahl.

Welcome back to Make Me Smart.

Where None of us is as Smart as all of us.

I'm Novasafo, filling in for Kimberly Adams. Thanks for joining us everybody. It's Tuesday, November 28th. Today we're revisiting our climate series with a new topic, the circular economy.

We have talked often, I think, on this show about consumption in the American economy.

And the thing that happens when we consume things is most of the time, we throw it away when we're done with it. And that it just adds to the

waste pile, it adds to the stress on the planet, it uses up our resources, hence something

called the circular economy,

which some people believe

could help us tackle the climate crisis in a way.

Cali Babbot is professor of sustainability

at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Professor Babby, welcome to the podcast.

Hi there, thanks so much for having me. Circular economy, a 30 second definition if you would.

Well, we can think about circular economy by what it's not, and that is the traditional way of going about business, which is a linear economy. We take resources out of the ground, we use them, we make products, and then we ultimately waste them.

...