Design Like Nature: Biomimicry for a Healthy Planet
Chapter One Inventions Gone Wild The secrets to a sustainable world are all around us Janine Benyus cofounder The Biomimicry Institute How does nature design How does nature design Biomimicry is the scientific term for copying nature not only to solve human problems but also to help protect our planet Bio means life and mimicry means the action of imitating so put them together and you’ve got the science of copying nature Everything from the largest mammals to the tiniest bacteria has spent millions of years figuring out how to work with the natural cycles of the planet It’s pretty neat that nature runs on sunlight and water Humans on the other hand use fossil fuels and toxic chemicals Nature wastes nothing but humans have left garbage pretty much everywhere on Earth The great news is we can change our ways There are solutions We just have to ask nature Take something as common as a leaf A leaf gains its energy to grow from the sun By studying the structure of a leaf we can learn more about how the leaf does this Then we can take our There’s more to a leaf than we can see at first glance KYRYL GORLOV GETTY IMAGES 88
Children of all ages have come up with inventions and designs that help protect the environment ARIEL SKELLEY GETTY IMAGES new knowledge one step further and apply it to something we need such as a more efficient solar panel There are scientists working on that idea right now If we want to know how to make less-toxic glue or how to create brilliant color nature is a fantastic teacher When engi neers designers architects or scientists look to nature to solve problems they are using biomimicry Humans love to invent and we’ve dreamed up many amazing things to make our lives easier and better It’s hard to imagine a world without computers and cars But at the same time our creations have changed our climate and polluted our world Before we dive in to learning how nature designs let’s look at how humans have gone from fitting into the environment by using what’s available to taking too many resources from the earth without thinking about what might happen in the future and how the explosion of new technologies and materials has changed our world for good and for bad 9
Natural Materials Natural Materials Can you imagine playing soccer with a ball made of tree sap Or growing the material for your T-shirt and then dyeing it with smashed bugs For as long as we have been around about 300,000 years humans have been making tools clothing and houses Until just a few hundred years ago all the materials had to be gathered from the natural world stone bone wood plants animals and insects Clothes could only be made from natural materials such as woven cotton wool or linen or leather from animal skins in mostly gray brown or off-white colors Buttons were made of materials such as shell or metal and were so costly that only the wealthy could afford them There were no plastic toothbrushes Instead people used toothbrushes made of sticks with brush-like ends or wild-boar hairs carefully threaded through handles drilled with small holes When we think of armor we usually think of metal suits or chain mail But the ancient Greeks had cloth armor First they made linen from the fibers of the flax plant Then they stuck 30 layers of the fabric together with a glue made from rabbit skins The armor was light and comfortable but could stop any arrow When modern-day researchers made a copy of this ancient armor they trusted it enough to wear it while getting shot with an arrow Royal Purple Royal Purple But natural materials have some limitations They wear out They get moldy They can be heavy or smelly or hard to make And sometimes it is difficult to harvest enough material to make enough armor or toothbrushes or clothing dye for a whole village never mind a huge city Take dye for example We consider it perfectly normal to go to the store and pick out a shirt in any color imaginable But for The Coast Salish Peoples of southern British Columbia traditionally used a type of reed called a scouring rush also known as horsetail as a natural toothbrush TIKTA ALIK SHUTTERSTOCK COM During testing some of the arrows bounced off the armor but this one didn’t GREG ALDRETE 10
most of human history clothes were dyed with roots berries bark or leaves or not dyed at all so they weren’t as colorful as they are now Certain colors like purple were so hard to make that only royalty could afford purple clothing These days a purple shirt isn’t harder to find or more expensive than one in another color But in Roman times only emperors wore purple The dye was made from snails Thousands of snails were collected and then each shell was cracked and the slime inside was squeezed out The slime was left in the sun until it turned purple it had to be left for just the right amount of time If it was left for too long it would turn dark red While the slime was changing color it smelled terrible Things changed in 1856 when William Henry Perkin who was trying to make a medicine to fight malaria accidentally made black gunk that turned fabric brilliant purple No snails needed He built a factory and made enough dye so that purple clothes weren’t just for royalty anymore The dye made from these ocean-dwelling snails Hexaplex trunculus was worth more than its weight in gold FABRIC MARINA KRYNOCHKINA SHUTTERSTOCK.COM SHELL JAMES ST JOHN FLICKR.COM CC BY 2.0 FACT To make natural dyes stick to fabrics people used to soak clothes in stale urine A woman in Chinchero Peru is using smashed cochineal insects leaves and flowers to dye handmade wool fabric M A BELIN SA NTOS SHUT TER S TOCK COM 11
