Lewis Akenji is the Managing Director of Hot or Cool Institute, a Berlin-based public-interest think tank that champions science-based collaboration towards building a sustainable civilisation. He has been featured on several global and local media outlets, including BBC, the Times, Reuters. He has consulted with organizations including United Nations agencies, the Asian and African Development Banks, the European Commission, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and has served as technical or science-policy adviser to several national government delegations, including Finland, Japan, Sweden, Indonesia, Hungary. Akenji conceived and led the 1.5-Degree Lifestyles project, analysing potential contribution of lifestyle changes to the aspirational 1.5 °C target under the Paris Agreement on climate change, and implications on equity and wellbeing.

Ruth Mugge is a professor in Design for Sustainable Consumer Behavior at Delft University of Technology. Her main research interests are (sustainable) consumer behavior, product perception, design for behavior change, and design for the circular economy.After completing her PhD on the topic of product attachment in 2007, Ruth Mugge continued her research on understanding consumers’ acceptance and behavior towards (sustainable) products with the intention to provide designers with guidelines on how to design products that trigger the desired inferences and behavioral responses. She has received both European and national (NWO) funding for her research. 

In this keynote, prof. Ruth Mugge will present how a Circular Economy requires changes in our consumption pattern. In a Circular Economy, individual consumers will need to interact differently with their products and perform new behaviors, such as maintaining and repairing durables and reusing packaging of fast moving consumer goods. It is unlikely that consumers will change their behaviors spontaneously. In the lecture, Ruth Mugge will elaborate how design can help in bringing about these behavior changes.