In our quest for long term sustainability, waste to resources, conservation and recycling, where can we turn to models that work? How about Ma Nature herself? After all, 3.8 billion years of Beta testing can’t be wrong!



In our book, The Necessary Revolution, we write about Janine Benyus and Biomimicry — the process of human industrial processes learning from and mimicking natural processes. How can spiders make silk stronger than Kevlar, without using boiling toxic acids, out of crickets at room temperature? How can hens lay eggs with shells tougher than concrete, produced from grain and grit at body temperature? How do leaves capture sunlight and turn it to energy, starch, sugar and structure without silicon and heavy metals?

Photo: Biomimicry Institute

Companies like Greenopolis Partners Nike and Interface have been exploring Benyus’ work to revolutionize their own products and processes.

Biologist and writer Janine Benyus has been exploring these and other questions and “matchmaking “industrial engineers with field biologists to find answers.
She notes that nature and natural processes follow 9 basic principles:

1. Nature runs on sunlight
2. Nature uses only the energy it needs
3. Nature fits form to function
4. Nature recycles everything
5. Nature rewards cooperation
6. Nature banks on diversity
7. Nature demands local expertise
8. Nature curbs excess form within
9. Nature taps the power of limits

Photo: Biomimicry Institute

"The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone." — Janine Benyus

At Biomimicry Institute, you can read stories of  new materials based on sharkskin that stop bacteria, warm dry clothing inspired by otters, self cleaning surfaces that save soap and water by mimicking a lotus, saving energy on heating and cooling by copying a termite colony, and much more. They have an online database of case studies at AskNature.org

So can you, your business, your school, community be as smart as a leaf, a bug, a chicken? You don’t need to know all the answers; just be willing to ask nature.