STRATEGIES YOU CAN USE (3)
Biomimicry
If you compare humans’ approach to making things to that of nature, nature is far more elegant and efficient. Engineers have long talked in terms of three processes: heat, beat and treat. In comparison to nature, our approach to manufacturing typically consumes huge amounts of energy and results in piles of toxic waste.
Nature cannot be so profligate. It can’t harness ‘ancient sunlight’, as fossil fuels are sometimes called, and nature is careful not to foul its own nest.
Biomimicry, using nature as an inspiration for design, can yield surprising insights. Most of what we want to do nature also does, only better: compute, color, cleanse, build, fortify, and so on. Spiders’ webs are stronger than Kevlar, and more flexible. Mussels create glue that works under water and then biodegrades. Geckos can adhere to glass. Slugs create their own highway over rough terrain. Janine Benyus, the biologist who coined the term ‘biomimicry’, does not envision industrial slug farms or spider factories. Instead, she and other ‘biomimics’ learn from nature’s ingenuity to inspire their own designs.
Much of this research is years away from saleable products, but some products are already in use. Better by Design includes a number of inspiring examples of biomimicry: Speedo swimsuits mimicking sharkskin to reduce drag, a dehydrated vaccine for use in developing countries imitating lichen, and dirt-resistant paint using the same process as the lotus to clean its leaves.
Benyus provides the following advice: invite a biologist to your design meetings and ask he or she to consider what in nature has the same problem and how does that organism solve the problem? We should ask: how does nature do this? How would nature want us to do this?
Operations
While much of a product’s impact is decided during design, everyday operational decisions also have an impact. Here are some of the most common strategies to improve your sustainability performance.
