Kaustubh recently completed his PhD at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. He was a part of the Circular Economy: Sustainable Implication and Guiding Progress (CRESTING) project, which focused on assessing circular economy practices and discourses related to sustainability and just transition. His transdisciplinary research centered on the transboundary waste and second-hand product trade from the European Union to countries in the Global South, with a specific focus on China, Nigeria, and Vietnam. One of the outcomes of his Ph.D. is the policy intervention known as Ultimate Producer Responsibility (UPR), which takes the multiple national and international cycles of waste and second-hand items as a fundamental starting point to ensure circularity, sustainability, and a just transition within the existing waste management Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy framework. He holds a joint MSc degree in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (MESPOM) from Central European University, the University of Manchester, and Lund University. His undergraduate degree is from Westminster College, where he majored in philosophy and minored in economics and political sciences.