Growing population and increased demand for food, inefficient resource use and food distribution, environmental impacts, and high rates of food wasted at all stages of the food system are all calling for transition towards more sustainable practices. In this article we apply the concept of circular economy to the case of a sustainable food system. Furthermore, we explore the transition towards a circular food system through the lens of socio-technical transition theory towards sustainability. We discuss challenges and potential solutions for the production stage (focusing on nutrient flow), the consumption stage (focusing on meat consumption), and food waste and surplus management and prevention.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been incorporating sustainability into education and curricula, where recent research has focussed on sustainability competences, pedagogical approaches, and how to connect them, generally on a single HEI. The process of integrating sustainability into education based on curricula assessment has been explained using adoption of innovations; and has the potential to explain the process of developing competences through pedagogical approaches. The aim of this paper is to investigate this process at academic discipline level. An online survey was developed to investigate teaching sustainability competences in 13 HEIs, from which 678 responses from educators were obtained. The competences and pedagogical approaches from the responses were ranked, and then the connections between the competences and pedagogical approaches per discipline were analysed using a correlations‐based framework, from which three disciplines groups were created. The groups were categorised using diffusion of innovations theory, which indicated that some disciplines are more innovative than others in adopting sustainability competence‐based teaching. The results are used to propose two frameworks to better understand the adoption of sustainability competence‐based teaching: (a) the D‐RAPID framework; and (b) the Disciplinary Multi‐dimensional Sustainability Influence Change for Academia (D‐MuSICA) memework. The adoption of sustainability competence‐base education must expand from a single HEI perspective to a disciplinary collaborative one spanning many HEIs, where academic disciplines should learn from each other's insights and mistakes and provide students with more transdisciplinary skillsets to make societies more sustainable.

Human activities are pushing the ecological boundaries of Earth. Rapid changes in climate and the environment create a complex, intertwined tangle of wicked problems. Sustainability science, whose focus is the interactions between humankind and nature, is the academic world’s response to the call to solve these problems. The Avenues to Sustainability is a comprehensive introduction to the concepts and theories of sustainability science, as well as to the ways in which the sustainability transformation of society could be accomplished. It also discusses how daily life, learning, cultural heritage, and art can foster a sustainable way of life. A timely guide to sustainability science and theory for both policymakers and ordinary citizens, The Avenues to Sustainability can also be used as a university textbook. In addition to research-based knowledge, the book includes contributions from actors in the public sector, businesses, NGOs, and others in Finland.