Back to our Roots: The Science of Biomimicry

In a society increasingly alienated from nature, in which human civilization views the natural world in terms of the resources it possesses rather than a guide to our own existence, mankind stands on the brink of a global, economic and environmental collapse. At this unprecedented crossroads in our history, the lessons learned from nature may prove to be a key to unlocking a peaceful and sustainable future. A diverse and growing group of scientists and businessman, biologists and engineers, farmers and designers, now look to the natural processes of the planet to lead them in revolutionizing their respective fields. This new and intriguing science, known as Biomimicry, requires a deep understanding and complete reverence of the plants and animals that formed productive and sustainable communities billions of years before humans stood on their own two feet. By learning from these complex systems, students of Biomimicry hope to redesign how we grow our food, how we power our lives, how we manufacture products, how we cure ourselves, and even how we conduct the financial business of the world. The following account details just a few pursuits from some of the individuals who look to nature to show them, and ultimately the world, the path to sustainability.

Over the relatively short time of human existence, mankind always faces the question of “How will I feed myself?”. Since the days of hunting and gathering, humans find more ways to harvest larger crop yields. Unfortunately, this ever-increasing harvest requires more and more land to feed the ever-growing population, resulting in the destruction of natural eco-systems by methods such as burning and clear-cutting. Simultaneously, mankind grows less and less of what previously inhabited these bio-regions and increasingly tends to arbitrarily decide what the land should grow, forcing native species out while inputting great amounts of resources to produce non-native crops. In America, the inherent problems of this system reared their heads in the form of the Dust Bowl of the thirties when, after years of uprooting the native prairie for farming, topsoil from the Midwest began showing up on the decks of ships hundreds of miles off the Atlantic coast (16). Rather than learn from their mistakes, Americans embraced the “Green Revolution”, and began farming the land with great amounts of petrochemicals. Ironically, while the use of pesticides grew 3,300% since 1945, the amount of crops lost to pests actually increased 20% during the same time period (18). An input of $1.00 in 1900 resulted in $4.00 worth of produce, while it takes $2.70 worth of input to get $4.00 of output now, due to increased costs of oil-based products (19). As we spray more and more chemicals on our food and pests develop stronger resistances to them, many people are asking, “Could there be a better way?”.

Wes Jackson and his team of colleagues at The Land Institute think a better option exists, but to get there he says, “We have to farm the way nature farms” (21). By observing the way a natural system functions, Jackson and his team find themselves redefining the tenets of modern agriculture. “Our goal at The Land Institute is to design a domestic plant community that behaves like a prairie, but that is predictable enough in terms of seed yield to be feasible for agriculture”, says Jon Piper, an ecologist and colleague of Jackson's at the institute. Through their research of native plants and their levels of productivity, Jackson and Piper hope to find a “sweet spot”, somewhere between the high-input monoculture of the Kansas wheat field and the low-input polyculture of the native prairie. To Jackson and many other agronomists, polyculture plots represent the future of agriculture. While their monoculture counterparts fall prey to pests and disease much easier, polyculture models resist these marauders through the sheer diversity of their inhabitants. While observing the prairie in its natural state, Jackson also quickly realized the additional benefits offered by perennial species, as opposed to the annual varieties planted by most farmers. For Jackson and his colleagues, a marriage between high-yielding perennials and the benefits of polyculture represents the “Holy Grail” of agriculture, a new way of farming that emulates nature, respects the “sense of place” of a region, and offers promise to feed the planet.

In addition to feeding the people of the world, biomimics imitate nature to find out better ways to power our planet. While engineers develop new ways to harness the energy of the sun, blue-green algae and photosynthetic bacteria, such as purple bacterium, continue to harvest solar rays at an amazing efficiency of 95%, many times greater than our best solar panels (59). By studying the photosynthetic processes of organisms like the purple bacterium, scientists like Tom and Ana Moore and their colleague Devens Gust hope to recreate the reactions that these micro-organisms so easily perform. The applications of their research could make the modern solar panel look rather outdated and pave the way towards a clean-energy future. Understanding how photosynthesis works could lead to a way of storing energy from the sun as a combustible fuel, such as hydrogen, from a chemical reaction similar to the one found in green plants. Since photosynthesis efficiently produces huge amounts of energy each year, in the form of 300 billion tons of sugar, a knowledge of the sun-harvesting properties in plants could revolutionize the ways in which we power our lives (69).

Perhaps no other facet of society uses as much of this energy as our industrial processes. Additionally, industry accounts for much of the pollution world-wide and in America. The production of paper, plastic, chemicals, and metals alone produce 71% of the toxic emissions in the United States (95). In America especially, the adoption of a cradle-to-grave approach towards manufactured goods requires a continuous flow of resources to make products that end up in a landfill almost immediately. Nature, on the other hand, uses only the energy and resources it needs and constantly recycles its wastes back into a closed-loop system, all the while producing materials far superior to those made by humans. Abalones in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington create shells incredibly stronger than our toughest ceramics, while mussels in the Atlantic ocean manufacture an underwater glue that the adhesive industry would love to patent. Meanwhile, the golden orb weaver spider makes a silk five times lighter than steel, yet five times as strong (132). By mimicking these natural systems and the materials they produce, humans may be able to create lightweight and incredibly strong building materials without the use of harsh chemicals and incredible amounts of pollution.

Observing and imitating nature can also lead to great advances in the field of medicine. In fact, a time existed when all of our new drugs came from plants and animals, resulting in 40% of our prescription medicines (172). Recently, scientists such as Kenneth Glander at Duke University became interested in the behavior of our ancestors, the primates, to help discover the various medicinal properties of plants. By noting the plants that a healthy lemur monkey avoids and observing which succulents they seek out in times of sickness, scientists like Glander figure out what flora might offer clues to cures for intestinal diseases such as giardia. Stifled by the high costs of chemical synthesis, large pharmaceutical companies increasingly look to nature for the next “wonder drug”. A 1992 report by the Office of Technology Assessment listed over 200 companies world-wide looking into plants as sources of pharmaceuticals or pesticides (174). For the pharmaceutical chemist seeking the knowledge stored in our ancient plants or the college professor looking to animals for their next clue in the hunt for a cure, endless possibilities exist, for now. At current rates of extinction, upwards of 25% of animal and plant species may disappear by the middle of this century.

The idea that business must harm nature to reach the highest, possible profit margin also finds itself disappearing, in part because of the work of biomimics. By structuring their companies like nature's eco-systems, CEOs around the world find that productivity increases while the impact on the environment lessens. Our current trends in business and industry cannot continue to prosper by maintaining and promoting such an extractive economy, the depleting resources and oil reserves simply won't allow it. Leaders in the business world know this and began consulting with biomimics to learn about “industrial ecology”, which author Janine Benyus calls “biomimicry's most oxymoronic term” (239). The biggest concern of business executives stems from how to make a shift to what writer Paul Hawken calls, the “ecology of commerce” (239). “The Industrial Revolution as we know it is not sustainable. But how do we land softly?”, questions Braden Allenby, the research vice-president for the Technology and Environment Department of the world's fifth largest company, AT&T (238). For biomimics and an increasing number of multi-national corporations, the answer lies within nature. While both natural and economic systems bring in materials and energy to manufacture products, business and industry models generally fail to recycle wastes and return nutrients back to the earth.

In Kalundborg, Denmark, however, one of the first examples of this no-waste economy offers a glimpse into the future of industrial ecology. By using the wastes created by neighboring companies, four separate businesses now coexist in a symbiotic relationship that increases profits through energy savings and helps the environment through reduced emissions. Waste steam from the Asnaesverket Power Company helps power the neighboring Statoil Refinery and Novo Nordisk, a pharmaceutical plant, while a pipeline delivers the remaining steam to about 3,500 homes for heat (255). Waste from Novo Nordisk, in the form a nitrogen-rich slurry, fertilizes the plants of local farmers and in return, Novo receives some of the harvest to feed bacteria-filled tanks used in their manufacturing process. Waste gas from the refinery now gets purified into usable fuel and sent back to the power company, as well as Gyproc, a wallboard manufacturer next door. This “ecopark” represents just the tip of the iceberg in the shift towards a more sustainable, ecological commerce.

Nature clearly possesses the answers to many of mankind's most pressing questions. Some of the ideas germinating within the fields of biomimicry may come to fruition in time to give us a chance at planting a sustainable future. Ultimately, humans need to humble themselves in order to harvest the knowledge that the natural world has to offer and co-exist with our planet and its processes. In any case, our civilization will reap the effects from the seeds that it sows.

What will you plant?

Bibliography

Benyus, Janine. Biomimicry. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1997.