Tag: sustainable design

From an Expert Manager of Things: Disrupt My Garbage Bin, Please!

Photo: https://trashbackwards.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/jumble.jpg

Trying to give away or get rid of a Whole Host of Things from our house, I decided I should add a “Manager of Things” title to my resume. I have become a truly reluctant expert. This last round of Expunging of Stuff saw me spend literally an entire day trying to give a Carload of Things away (not to mention the time previously spent to sort and separate), only to come back home with a third of it. My goal was to not throw anything away. I failed.

As an Expert Manager of Things, I’ve learned what can and can’t be recycled (hint: not much can be easily recycled), what Things secondhand stores are willing to take and what they’re not (especially when it comes to Children’s Things) what Used Things people are willing to pay for – which have just enough value that people will come pick them up but not pay for them, and which have no value (unless you’re very patient with space and time to spare), and how arbitrary and relative price can be (how soon do you need to get rid of it, how badly do you need the money, how many people actually want the Thing, etc.).

For anyone who manages Stuff in their house, you know what I’m talking about when I say that the Shuffling of Things from one pile or shelf or room to another and eventually out the door to Somewhere Else is a perpetual pain in the rear. Particularly if you have children, the amount of Stuff is overwhelming and much of it is crap. My threshold for the Random Stuff that finds it way onto our counters and furniture and into our car is just about at its peak. This results in a less careful approach to disposal. I’ve become an expert at discretely putting Things into the free giveaway pile under our front porch (avoiding the watchful eyes of my children), but after learning that most Children Things can’t be recycled or even given away, more and more Stuff ends up in the garbage for a lack of any other option.

Reflecting after my latest effort to move a carload of things into other people’s hands and NOT into the garbage, I recognize my efforts are tantamount to an extreme behavior in the United States, Land of Stuff. But even for people like me, the options are limited by both the disposal methods available, government safety regulations preventing the resale of some goods, and the failure of our economy to place value on design and manufacture products that can avoid the garbage dump. While the generation and management of waste has improved in the United States over the last 30 years, the reality is that people still throw the majority of their Things into the garbage, with only about a third of waste going to recycling. Even when recycling and composting are provided by municipalities, waste streams still get contaminated by uneducated individuals (a perpetual problem at the last rental we occupied), and even if you do your best, the waste hauler might just take it all to the landfill anyway.

It’s stupid and stresses me out. The thing is, every Thing is a physical manifestation of something taken from the earth. Our economic priority to willfully ignore the full impact of each Thing is driving us (or already has?) towards irreversible ecological system collapse – mind you, these are the very systems that support the survival of our own species. Therefore, for every Thing that comes into my hand, I have a heavy heart for what it represents. But I also see huge opportunity. We have the ability to make choices, and there are opportunities at all levels of the system to change behaviors and processes. It does not have to be this way. At all.

But we’ve made it easy to forget this is a problem – you just put Things in the garbage bin and you never have to see them again. Off your conscience. It’s too easy. And it lets consumers, government and designers off the hook. We all have to do better. And this pile of garbage? It’s ripe for disruption.

Circular Economy

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s (EMF) circular economy push is a step in the right direction. Aiming to “redefine products and services to design waste out, while minimising negative impacts,” the foundation looks to rethink and redesign entire systems. This is inspired by the fact that in natural systems there is no waste – all byproducts are raw materials for something else in the system, and any byproduct that isn’t used efficiently is an opportunity for innovation and a new niche to be established in the system. These niches add the value of complexity – diversity, redundancy and variation – that make systems resilient. Circular economy advocates ask, why can’t we do the same?

In October, I was fortunate enough to attend one of EMF’s CE100 member  “acceleration workshops” in Chicago on behalf of the Biomimicry Institute. I was able to see firsthand how companies large and small – retailers, commercial goods manufacturers, government agencies, the food industry – are grappling with what the circular economy actually means in practice. It’s not clear to most of them, but the energy and interest in figuring it out is strong, from trying to figure out new retail and take-back models to overcoming the structural deficiencies of recycled plastic. Just check out the Disruptive Innovation Festival this year (DIF 2017) to see how people from across the spectrum are working to make it real.

Starting with The End

Going back to my recent failed effort to avoid throwing Things in the garbage, I can’t help but think that any effort to transition towards a circular economy (or something similar) must start with what happens to the product at the end of its life. The questions must be asked at a minimum:

  • What disposal options are available to the consumer?
  • How likely are they to use the option I am considering, and is it even available to the majority of my typical consumers?
  • How much time will they dedicate to disposal/handing off of my product?
  • What behaviors do they currently have around “waste” disposal?
  • If they must shift their behavior to do what I want them to do, what would incentivize them to do so? Is that realistic?
  • How can I make it as easy as possible?
  • How can I leverage behaviors they already have to achieve my goals?
  • Do I need to think bigger and change my business model?

Speaking of disposal options, I can’t help but wonder: what if all local governments mandated that all waste must fall into specific categories with no waste to landfill allowed? What if residents had to consciously think about what they brought into their house knowing they would be heavily fined or inconvenienced if they couldn’t recycle, compost or hand it back when they were done with it? What kind of bottom up consumer pressure would that put on retailers and back up the supply chain to the design table? Or what if municipalities made waste companies pay to pick up their valuable byproducts (which we currently call solid waste, but they should hire marketing professionals to change the narrative!) – would the companies still throw everything in the landfill? Talk about disruption.

A select version of that has happened in Illinois – electronic waste is no longer allowed in the garbage. The reality of this regulation is that informed residents are reliant upon municipalities to offer them options for disposal. If the municipality doesn’t communicate about the regulation, only offers a drop off window one day a year, or simply doesn’t offer any help because of budget issues, people may throw small Electronic Things in the garbage anyway. Maybe residents will find a local retailer willing to accept Select Electronic Things, but there are few, if any, incentives to go the extra mile.  And that’s for those who are informed. Me? I put Electronic Things on top of my garbage bin and scrap collectors that roam our alleys pick them up.

But okay, let’s be realistic. Municipalities (made up of elected officials) aren’t going to all of a sudden turn the tables on solid waste for their own constituents. So what are our options?

We could encourage consumers to be obsessively vigilant about what they let into their homes to prevent having to throw as much Stuff away in the first place, and if it is something that will eventually be discarded, they can make sure the products they buy are made to be reused by someone else, recycled or composted. Oh wait, I said I’d be realistic. Scratch that…

Getting Down to Business

Okay, so let’s move onto business. EMF is focusing their efforts on businesses for a reason. There is incentive for businesses to try to tap into the circular economy craze. The amount of inefficiency in our current system designated as “waste” is obscene, and the potential to turn that “waste” into money is enough to set any businessperson off rummaging through one of the many Blue Ocean gyre garbage patches or the nearest beach. But they might just have a look in their own garbage bin for inspiration.

Based on my own experience, there are clear opportunities to identify linear waste streams that are overly ripe for disruption, even if you just limit yourself to Kids Stuff:

To be clear, I wouldn’t have time to go to eight different places to properly pass on these eight different categories of Things (although, okay, I admit I might do it anyway, but the average person probably would not). Solutions need to make it easy for the consumer to pass Things onto their next phase, which is why I think often solutions might come down to changes in business models that incentivize behavior change.

Some companies looking to close the loop on waste generated by their own products that can’t be handled by traditional municipal recycling programs are partnering with TerraCycle. TerraCycle aims to make recycling easy, and has figured out a way to recycle most “non-recyclable” wastes. Their programs are free (funded by these partner companies) for generators of waste – individuals, schools, anyone – and even raise money for charity. Their efforts are impressive, and they clearly have honed in on a part of the market that is wide open. However, while the TerraCycle solution addresses “end of pipe” issues, we’re still talking about waste generation at a massive scale.

At an even larger scale before anything gets to my garbage can, the U.S. Materials Marketplace “facilitates company-to-company industrial reuse” where ” industrial waste streams are matched with new product and revenue opportunities.” The platform is growing and used by hundreds of companies to start to close the loop. The potential to leverage circular economy opportunities in business-to business scenarios is enormous. Yet most of these businesses are in the supply chain for and/or make products that eventually end up in our homes and offices. And there it still is, the pile of stuff in my home that I couldn’t do anything with but throw away. This has to be addressed at the front end of design.

Designing Value In

So we’re back to the literal drawing table. Unfortunately, businesses and designers that operate in a consumer-based linear economy in which business has no responsibility for waste and sees planned obsolescence – literally designing value out of a product by ensuring it’s useless after a short period of time so the consumer has to buy another – as a serious business driver might have insurmountable challenges conceptualizing and rethinking their products and business models within the circular economy. However, for those ready and willing to make the transition, using biomimicry tools can help jumpstart and guide the redesign process.

So how can designers design products or even business models to fit into circular economy models? (check out these EMF case studies for examples!) Using biomimicry in the innovation process can help with both understanding and identifying opportunities at the system and business model scales, as well as solving specific product design challenges that might arise, such as when trying to substitute materials or redefining how to deliver the same function as the old product, but in a completely new way.

A good place to start when thinking about how to deliver a product with the big picture materials systems in mind, we can look to biology to understand the strategies for how to design “products” that fit into it. At a high level when using the biomimicry methodology, we can look to Life’s Principles such as:

  • Use Life-Friendly Chemistry – This seems obvious, but understanding and deliberately designing products with materials that benignly interact with life throughout their own life-cycles is critical – green chemistry efforts bring us closer to making this a reality. Even Life’s un-friendly chemistry (like snake venom) decomposes into benign elements.
  • Break Down Products into Benign Constituents – Speaking of decomposing, every material created should break down into something harmless and useful for another purpose, non-toxic elements that won’t harm humans or any other life when recycled back into the environment. This must be an imperative from the outset when choosing materials in the design process.
  • Build Selectively with a Small Subset of Elements – Often times human-made materials are made with many elements of the periodic table, many of which life never uses and for good reason – they are often rare and/or hard to access, toxic, particularly when concentrated in large quantities. Instead, life creatively uses only a few abundant elements as building blocks to achieve an incredible array of forms and materials through variations in structure. Our materials too should be limited to life-friendly elements of the periodic table – what elements are avoided by life, and/or when rare elements are used, why and in what forms and quantities? How too can we take advantage of abundant elements to create diverse materials?
  • Do Chemistry in Water – Life uses water as a solvent and we should too. Water has incredible properties – if we can learn to leverage them, our chemical processes would significantly improve their impact. Biology has a lot to teach us about this!
  • Use Low Energy Processes – Life does chemistry at ambient temperatures. How can we rethink the way we process and manufacture materials and products to leverage existing energy flows?
  • Use Multi-Functional Design – Life’s designs are elegant, achieving myriad functions with one simple solution. How can we more effectively engineer designs that provide multiple benefits to the user with more than one use in mind, reducing the number of individual products needed? Smartphones have disrupted so many industries because they serve multiple functions in one easy-to-use piece of technology. Where can that strategy be replicated?
  • Recycle All Materials – This a no brainer when we’re talking about the circular economy. This is fundamental to the way nature works. Again, an understanding of the end game should happen during the design process. And to cycle back, at the outset of the design process finding opportunities to use “waste” materials in your own product starts to build that circular and self-supporting economy.
  • Fit Form to Function – Achieve function through elegant forms that require less energy and material (and are manufactured using low energy processes!). How can you achieve better results through intentionally using form to achieve function(s)?
  • Use Readily Available Materials and Energy – Products are often made of materials that are made with raw materials sourced on one continent, processed and or manufactured on another, then shipped to another continent (many even back to the same one!) to be put into a product that is then sold all over the world – a hugely energy intensive process that often relies on fossil fuels obtained who knows where. Birds don’t fly to Canada to gather materials, then bring those materials back to the Amazon to make a nest, then bring that nest back to Texas to have babies. We know that would be absolutely ridiculous. What materials exist locally at each of your manufacturing plant locations? Are there currently undervalued consistent “waste” streams that you might use? How might using local materials reduce risk and increase the resilience of your supply chain?

As we wrap our heads around what redesigning products for the circular economy looks like. biomimicry can be an important tool for helping design teams make these transitions – significantly broadening their thinking, providing inspiration with brand new ideas and science literally no one has seen before, and starting to shift concepts of what’s possible. But once we know the goals and think about how systems might begin to shift, it’s often hard to practically conceptualize and embody these principles in an actual product.

In addition to using Life’s Principles as a framework to think about design implications for the circular economy at a systems level, biomimicry also has a lot to contribute to the innovation process in looking to organisms to solve for specific, practical design challenges. Life has myriad solutions to kickstart and guide that redesign process, offering up a treasure trove of ideas that can help build a roadmap for short-term tweaks to long-term aspirational paradigm shifts. Critical to discovering design breakthroughs is ensuring that during the biomimicry process the design team digs deep into and stays true to the science they are mimicking including the system in which that organism operates – context, raw materials, manufacturing process and end of life.

How are (or might) you use biomimicry to transition to the circular economy? And please, start by looking at the piles upon piles of Things leaving our houses with nowhere to go – the pile is ripe for disruption! I’d love to hear about and showcase your efforts. Let’s change our story!

Our Built Environment: My Current Reading List for Shifting Paradigms

The more I think about the challenges facing us (humanity) and the opportunities to use biomimicry for innovation in the built environment, the more I believe that we can come up with super cool solutions using biomimicry for any challenge, but unless the fundamental assumption of everyone at the design table is that our built environment is dependent upon, participates in and can support thriving local ecosystems, we will produce solutions that will ultimately fall short of embodying the shift we want and need to see in the way we live life on this planet.

I also believe that once designers come to the table with a basic scientific understanding of our entwinement with the life around us, a whole new world of creative opportunity opens up to not just design and build a structure that solves for human needs, but rather design and build a multifunctional, responsive structure that is a participant in a complex web of life. The next question then becomes, what else can the structure do?! Biologists at the design table can help work with designers to answer that question.

There is incredible thought leadership and work being done around the world to try to reconcile how we can put into words and practice these ideas of shifting a built environment designed to sit upon a landscaped into one that lives within it. The related articles at the end of this post were shared with me by biomimicry colleagues (thanks Josh Stack, Jane Toner and Norbert Hoeller!) and are on my reading list to help me wrap my head around how these ideas fundamentally change our approach and how we move forward.

My thought is, imagine if a region could get together to establish that fundamental assumption for itself – bringing together designers and decision-makers from all functions and scales of the built environment to agree that all design should strive to support fundamental ecosystem functions using local native ecosystem metrics. Each participant in this collective leadership could influence their own piece of the puzzle (playing out in various industries and scales) while at the same time considering and building in mechanisms for how their piece fits into, can respond to and support the whole.  Can it be done?

At Biomimicry Chicago we are boldly imagining such a future for the Chicago region through our Deep Roots Initiative which we are kicking off with our Deep Roots Workshop April 21. We want to explore these ideas and see if/how we can put these ideas to practice. There is incredible work being done in Chicago in trying to address multiple challenges having to do with various ecosystem functions at multiple scales. We have an opportunity to come together to understand how they are all interrelated from an ecological perspective, define what is ecologically “sustainable” for the region and set an overarching framework of goals to strive for. Our subsequent measures of progress as we intentionally restore ecosystem functions in our built environment will then have a scientific basis for assessing whether or not we as a region are truly on the path toward “sustainability.”

The more minds thinking about this, the better. I encourage you to feel free to share more resources in the comment thread below. Only together can we change our story!

Inspiration to Brainstorming: Biomimcry Global Design Challenge – Climate Change

Following up on something I have been thinking about since my post on inspiration for the Global Biomimicry Design Challenge on climate change, I thought I’d share an example of my thought process on using natural models for initial brainstorming. This is my first pass and I haven’t dug deep into the science, but am testing the waters on a high-level idea. So bear with me as I try to wrap my head around this one – energy and associated system cycles. I have more questions than answers as my thoughts are only (maybe not even) half-baked – maybe you can help me out. Or feel free to use my ideas to add to yours!

Last week I was talking with my colleague about various major categories of ecosystem functions. Her diagram had five categories, including “energy” and “carbon”. In looking at the diagram however, I realized that this perspective separates out two components that are fundamentally part of, but not even all of, one system. Does combining the conversations of carbon sequestration and energy efficiency into a comprehensive discussion about the entire system around energy beyond just the carbon cycle, with a comparison to the natural model, provide an avenue to identify missed opportunities to balance things out?

When we talk about energy it is almost always purely in the mindset of procurement/consumption. Energy flow is one way – we dig it up/suck it up/soak it up/stick a turbine in it and gobble it up. What’s the result? We put that energy to work for us in various ways that fuel our activities – cooking, transporting, building, farming, etc. The end result is that that energy once used is gone, but the benefits we reap from consuming it might live on in the form of something made (cooked food, a product, a house, a road…). Doing more with one unit of energy is how we improve efficiency. In the sustainability realm the conversation about “energy efficiency” is sometimes shifted to “carbon management” in recognition of energy consumption (specifically when it’s carbon-based) as a component in the larger carbon cycle.

When we talk about carbon sequestration it’s often a kind of nebulous, unseen phenomenon that most people don’t understand. We know it’s part of the carbon cycle and is a component we have increasingly realized we need to address because there’s this vast amount of carbon dioxide accumulating in our atmosphere and changing our climate. So we also relate carbon sequestration to energy in the realm of the need to pull back out the carbon dioxide emitted during the burning of fossil fuels and organic matter to help balance the carbon cycle. But this discussion is not often expanded to be related to a comprehensive picture of energy beyond a discussion of carbon dioxide. And while carbon dioxide is our main concern, maybe an analysis of the whole system could identify opportunities we might otherwise miss.

In nature, energy procurement and consumption is fed by the sun, but the story of energy is not just about carbon dioxide. It involves an intricate dance of several inputs and outputs in the system enable it to stay balanced in perpetuity – everything is used and recycled with the exception of heat. Not true of our current human system. Even when we look to understand photosynthesis for the conversion of radiant heat to energy to try to replicate that natural model (solar panels), we choose to basically ignore the whole sequestering of carbon dioxide, use of water and releasing of vast amounts of oxygen, water and carbon dioxide thing that occurs in photosynthesis too – we’re just interested in the conversion of energy from one form to another. Are we missing vast components of a balanced system and thus opportunities to greatly improve our design? What if we tried to mimic the functions of the entire natural system of inputs and outputs to restore balance?  

I’ve already talked about how our energy systems have knocked the carbon cycle out of balance. So, using biomimicry, if we want to use the plant energy cycles – complete with the inputs and outputs – as a model for our energy systems, we need to understand nature’s energy system first and then draw metaphors. Easiest thing to do is to draw a picture!

The following diagram shows an overall simplified cycle of inputs and outputs involved in photosynthesis, plant growth and energy flows supporting the food web (that’s us in the “animal” block). (Photosynthesis is the process in which radiant energy is turned into chemical energy in the form of sugars, which are the building blocks for plant structure (starches) as well as immediate energy for plant growth. That stored energy in plants is the energy that gets passed up the food chain from herbivores to carnivores and everything in between.)

Nature's model

The above diagram shows how the byproducts of each step contribute to critical resources for other steps in the process, creating a closed loop with the exception of the renewable energy input of the sun and outputs of heat. It’s brilliant.

Contrast that with examples of our energy systems. The following diagrams also show simplified energy flows in human-designed systems.

Human model

Okay, so now we have an overall idea of how these both work. Notably for me, neither of the human-designed energy systems result in closed loop cycles of inputs and outputs. The solar obviously resembles more closely the procurement and conversion of radiant energy at a site, similar to a plant. I don’t know enough about energy systems to know how to wrap my head around the conversion of radiant energy to electricity vs. chemical energy – that’s above my pay grade for this blog post! So let’s keep it simple for now (but if you know, let me know a good resource to find out more!).

In looking at the coal-fired power plant example, you’ll notice that the inputs include coal, oxygen (O2) (oxygen needed for combustion of coal) and water. In looking at the energy cycle of the food web, you’ll notice that the inputs and outputs are similar to that of an animal – animals consume glucose (stored energy) from plants or other animals that have eaten plants. Animals also consume oxygen which is needed for chemical reactions that result in growth (for the metabolic process). So we might draw the following metaphors included in the above diagram:

  • Oxygen = oxygen (needed for a chemical reaction
  • Coal = stored chemical energy (sugars) (this is the fuel)
  • Power plant = animal
  • Use of electricity to build structures = metabolism (growth)
  • Battery storage = maybe ATP? (adenosine triphosphate, or “the ‘molecular unit of currency’ of intracellular energy transfer”)

(Since I have not spent more than today on this, my metaphors might be off. What do you think?)

If you agree for now that we might draw a metaphor between animals and our human-made power plants, what does that mean for our overall cycle? To me it means our current design is missing a plan for the majority of the system needed to maintain the required balance for stable system functioning (as evidenced through climate change). The question is, how can we think about our energy systems more holistically and model them after the original power plants and energy webs?

If we go with the above, and our current energy system design only includes the “animal” component of the larger system, what if we expand our discussion of “energy” to include the entire cycle of inputs and outputs to understand how we can design an energy system that fits within the natural balance to maintain climate stability? Who uses energy in the system and how? What do they produce as a byproduct of using that energy? What questions does that raise about our systems?

  • Need for balance of inputs & outputs: the consumption and sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) with the release of oxygen (O2), carbon dioxide and water. If fossil fuels and other biomaterials aren’t burned for energy at all, obviously this changes the equation and reduces the burden on the system to sequester carbon dioxide (once restored to a balance from the current state, and this of course ignores whatever inputs and outputs for making the product (e.g., a solar panel)). But since we aren’t flipping the switch on fossil fuels any day soon, we need to find ways to bring the carbon cycle back into balance. And what about the release of oxygen in the process – what part of our system might generate oxygen as a byproduct?
  • Forms of energy: What would a system look like that relies on local real-time renewable conversion of radiant energy to, and storage of, chemical energy that is in a form readily accessible for use (as opposed to use of non-renewable storage of radiant energy captured in fossil fuels and turned to electricity)? Lots of solar cells (produced with solar energy sources!) and batteries? Any other options?
  • If plants (real plants, not human power plants!) are the consumers of carbon dioxide in our natural model, what would be the equivalent of a plant in human energy systems? Manufacturers creating raw materials? Does that reveal the missing link in our system – manufacturers who convert radiant energy on site to fuel their own manufacturing processes (core needs) as well as build raw materials (which form the basis of structures) from carbon dioxide? If so, we clearly need to rethink the potential of a hugely (over) abundant (free!) resource – carbon dioxide – as a building block for materials. Some materials manufacturers are already thinking this way, but if this is the key to balancing the cycle, we need some serious widespread innovation using carbon as a fundamental building block of many more our materials.
  • Can we use the energy flow of a food web to think more about how the supply chain beyond materials manufacturers plays a role – what’s the equivalent of a herbivore (e.g., a manufacturer turning materials into some form of product?), omnivore or carnivore in human systems? Do they exist in the same type of balance we see in land-based food systems (i.e., does it turn out we have an overabundance of “carnivores” requiring high energy inputs?)? If so, by increasing energy efficiency are we creating more “herbivores” ??
  • We’ve cut down a lot of plants – trees to be more exact. Whenever you see green, you are looking at the sequestration of carbon dioxide in materials. It would be foolish to think we shouldn’t also be restoring natural systems to leverage their ability to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. But to what extent? This thinking is reflected in E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth initiative.

Oh, so many more questions than answers! 🙂

My brain is spinning so we’ll have to leave additional pondering for another day. Next steps for me if I were to pursue this further would be to do a deep dive into the science to find out more specifically how this works each step of the way. Next I would then recheck my metaphors and make sure that everything actually makes sense – for every single part of the system. This is where the fun happens – you never know what you’ll find out.

What flaws do you see in my thinking? If any, how would you rewrite those metaphors in line with your thinking? What can you add? How can we build on this? How might you go deeper? What are the right metaphors? What is the natural model equivalent to “electricity”? Or am I totally off base? I’m excited to see what comes out in the Project Drawdown initiative to see if/how their recommendations line up (or not) with this thinking.

Biomimicry: Inspiration, Jackpot, Failure & Hope

While walking in the grocery store last Sunday, the shelves were empty in several places where they hadn’t been restocked. The bare shelves were just a reflection of a busy day, but the thought crossed my mind, what if access to choice in foods was like this everyday? I am lucky – spoiled rotten really – but for many in my own country, let alone around the world, food insecurity is a reality. (Food insecurity is the set of circumstances that prevent your access to food such as lack of money, unemployment, lack of access to transportation and health problems)

Can you imagine being hungry everyday? Or knowing that you can buy food now, but at the end of the month when your bank account runs dry, you may have to send your kids to school hungry? Or choosing between (for the same price) a box of processed mac ‘n’ cheese that could feed your family and a healthy apple that could only be a snack? Or stand in a long line to pick up free food from a food pantry two days after you ran out of food? Food insecurity has no race, ethnicity or class. This is happening to people in your own community, maybe to your unemployed neighbor who lost their job 6 months ago. It breaks my heart and nags at me. So I thought I’d share my experience with using biomimicry to develop solutions to this problem in the hopes I might inspire you to do the same with something you care about.

Art of Science Learning Innovation Incubator

To someone who loves food in a country with an excess of it (approximately ⅓ of our food goes to waste), the fact that approximately 1 in 6 people in the US aren’t necessarily sure where their next meal will come from is simply abhorrent. For this reason and to expand my skills in the innovation process for a good cause, I participated in the 2014  Art of Science Learning (AoSL) year-long Chicago Innovation Incubator focused on urban nutrition challenges.

The innovation incubator was a lesson in the innovation process, but even more than that, I increasingly realized through the weekly presentations by a wide variety of people working on this issue in Chicago that extremely well-intentioned knights riding in on white horses with solutions aimed at helping communities most often really don’t change anything in the long term. Change must be fostered, generated and supported from within communities to be sustained. Bringing in fresh food into a neighborhood doesn’t change the neighbor’s employment status, transportation options, nor the food choices that person makes. In short, the underlying challenges that cause food insecurity and sustainable affordable access to fresh foods are still there, even after the knights ride off into the sunset.

How would nature…?

It just so happens that I started my Biomimicry Professional program in the fall of 2013, and started my first biomimicry thinking course in January 2014. To, as Dayna Baumeister likes to say, “feed two birds with one scone”, I used my biomimicry thinking homework to find natural models that might inform and inspire my brainstorming around urban nutrition challenges in the innovation incubator. I was not disappointed.

I started out with the question, How does nature self-organize to create a complex ecosystem? After my biological model brainstorming, I settled on mychorrizal fungal networks. Mycorrhizal fungal networks (“mycorrhizal networks “) provide the foundational structure in which feedback loops allow diverse species to interact and direct resources where needed, resulting in a complex self-organized ecosystem. Mycorrhizal networks consist of interconnected mycelium of any number of fungus species that also connect the roots of different plants. The mycorrhizal network fungi obtain part of all of their carbon from the plant species linked into the network, while the plants obtain and the nutrients the mycelium take up through the soil, resulting in a mutualistic relationship.

A prime example of this relationship between the networks and plant species is the presence of mycorrhizal networks in the interior Douglas-fir (Pseudostuga menziesii var. glauca) forests of North America. The networks play an integral role in these self-organized complex, adaptive systems. The mycorrhizal networks, which connect most trees in a dry interior Douglas-fir forest, provide a shared infrastructure through which the network shuttles carbon, nutrients or water from older to young trees according to need through positive and negative feedback loops. The largest, oldest trees serve as hubs, much like the hub of a spoked wheel, where younger trees establish within the mycorrhizal network of the old trees. Survival of these establishing trees is greatly enhanced when they are linked into the mycorrhizal network of the old trees as seen particularly after a disturbance in the subsequent self-organization that occurs to regenerate the forest facilitated by the foundational mycorrhizal network. (1)

The example of the mycorrhizal network’s role in the Douglas-fir ecosystem can be extrapolated to other ecosystems as well – the networks provide an incredible tool through which distinct species can interact and share resources according to need.

The deep function of this network that I focused on for the urban nutrition challenge was the redistribution resources. In a nutshell (design principle), the use of positive and negative feedback loops to facilitate efficient exchange and redistribution of resources according to need to diverse entities via an interconnected network that contains dispersed resource-rich hubs results in the emergence of more stable, resilient communities and allows for rapid regeneration after periods of disturbance.

The biomimicry-based solution

Understanding mycorrhizal network design principles in combination with Life’s Principles gave me a unique perspective on the challenges that no one else in the program came to on their own. Being a systems thinker, the ideas I brainstormed from this design principle were grand, and included an internet-based platform that facilitated transparent real-time exchange of fresh foods (aka, resources) from a wide variety of producers to a wide variety of consumers (diverse species) on a regional scale (ecosystem). (To be more aligned with ecosystem functions, I also think facilitation of movement of organic materials for composting within the same regional scale on the same platform would help to close the material loops!).

I focused on the idea that seedlings have a better survival rate when tapped into the network, and that feedback loops signaling the need for resources to resource hubs and subsequent delivery of those resources improves chances for survival. The platform could benefit different scales – business startups and individuals needing to tap into the system. The platform would enable startups to find and tap into resources from and develop relationships with established resource hubs within the region. At the individual level, the platform would provide the link to enable people to find where fresh food is being sold within a defined area when they are looking for it, rate fresh foods at different locations, alert people when food had run out (if earlier than the stated time of sale), etc. Further developing how this communication platform would work at all levels would allow for self-organization of the system to efficiently distribute resources – the development and growth would come from within the system.

Many, many people are working to reduce food waste on the delivery side and are making impressive strides in this area. But we figured while it’s great to make more food available for free that would otherwise be wasted, if few people know it’s there, have you really achieved anything? So to meet our goal of developing a minimally viable product within the incubator’s timeframe, we focused in on one critical aspect of the food system that most looking to solve urban nutrition challenges and food waste do not focus on – the consumer’s ability to know where food is when they need it. 

As indicated above, survival of young trees is improved when they are tapped into the mycorrhizal fungal network. If, using this metaphor of the the internet as the fungal network and individual people as trees, being tapped into the network that serves as the pathway for getting resources is critical to one’s survival, especially in hard times. The reality is that many people living with food insecurity and hunger do not have the means or access to be tapped into our food system, and therefore suffer the consequences. 

After our team dug deeper, we found out that there is not a viable quick way to let these same people know where food will be, and when it will be there. Word of changes to food pantry schedules, new urban farm stands and farmers markets, new businesses, must mainly be spread through word of mouth and through community bulletin boards. This inefficiency in communication hinders people’s ability to know if and where food is available when they need it. It also potentially hinders food pantry and urban farmer’s ability to give away or sell all their food, resulting in a loss of potential to reduce food waste or grow local homegrown businesses. In addition, the fact that for most people food insecurity is cyclical, meaning it might just be a few months that people need help spread out over a year. So being up-to-date about opportunities to access free or affordable local fresh food can be difficult when the person is only looking for resources on a sporadic basis (due to a “disturbance” in his/her life).

Our idea targeted this disconnection and provided a way to bring people back into their local fresh food system using technology already available to the targeted group. A real-time communication platform that facilitates the distribution of information (instead of the distribution of food itself) from those who have it to those who need it, enables users to meet their own needs on their own parameters. Again, looking at two scales, it facilitates the establishment of businesses such as urban farms or facilitate the ability of food pantries to fulfill their mission by increasing their ability to communicate directly with consumers previously outside of their communication channels, increasing sales or people reached. At the smaller scale, individuals increase their ability to find food when they need it in their local area, supporting local added value. The communication platform does not dictate anything, but enables the community to self-organize, strengthening feedback loops around who is providing food, who is looking for food, what kind of food they are looking for, and when they need it. This presents the opportunity to create conditions to interact in concert to move toward an enriched system (the “Self-organize” life’s principle).

For this reason we developed a MVP for a communication platform that enables people to get updates and reminders about where food will be and when it will be there, using existing technology currently available to a majority of people in this situation (e.g., if we developed a mobile app, and only 20% of our target audience had smart phones, we would fail to bring our target audience into the system). The tool would be flexible and allow people to create their own parameters for what and when and how they wanted to receive information. After talking and working with food pantries and consumers to beta test our idea, we realized we had developed a prototype that hit upon a real unmet need in the market.

The reality of the innovation process

So what happened? Our team did not have the time (for reasons specific to each of us – existing careers, school, family, etc.) to put into making this product a reality, and figuring out viable funding scenarios was difficult. Without a dedicated champion to move it forward, the idea and work we did fizzled.

I also found that being the only person who understood the biology and method I had used to generate the initial ideas, it was difficult to continue to use the biomimicry methodology and science to further inform, develop and expand upon the idea. I think if I had worked with a team receptive and interested in using biomimicry, we could have arrived at an even more well-rounded solution. As I have said before, using high-level design principles is great for ideation, but really understanding the biology from the beginning – taking the time to be very specific about each piece, particularly when working with system challenges – creates a depth of understanding and true potential for innovative ideas that might change the world. This gives me hope.

Were I to go back and revisit this effort (with a willing team!), I would begin again with doing a deep dive into exactly (as far as scientists currently know) how these mycorrhizal fungal networks work – what resources are being shared, how signaling works, how the interface between the roots of plants and the fibers of fungus functions, etc. I would then compare that to the work I did to understand our food system components and their interactions and be very detailed about the metaphors I would draw between the two systems. In doing that, the differences in functions, strategies and mechanisms – and the potential for our system to function differently and perhaps better for all involved – would emerge. It would then of course be up to us to make it happen.

So if you are thinking of using biomimicry to help solve a challenge such as for the Biomimicry Institute’s Global Design Challenge on Climate Change, I encourage you to find a team from the start that is on board with using the biomimicry methodology and start with and stick to the science as you develop your idea. It’s not easy, and certainly factors way beyond the innovation methodology can and do scuttle a project. But if we keep trying, we just might change our story.

 

(1) Sources:

Beiler, K. J., Durall, D. M., Simard, S. W., Maxwell, S. A. and Kretzer, A. M. (2010), Architecture of the wood-wide web: Rhizopogon spp. genets link multiple Douglas-fir cohorts. New Phytologist, 185: 543–553. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8137.2009.03069.x

“Mycorrhizal networks and learning” by David Wiley. iterating toward progress blog. JULY 21, 2011. Accessed January 2014.  

#SystemReset – Part 1: Biomimicry and the “How” of DIF”s #SystemReset

I’m a big fan of one of the three 2016 Disruptive Innovation Festival’s (DIF) themes, #SystemReset – “It’s time for a change of operating system.” That about sums up where I am with everything, so I’m adopting it for my next series of posts on biomimicry’s potential for setting us on completely new paths. Where is that System Reset button??? I want one.

I think I’ve seen glimpses of it in Michelle Obama’s recent speeches, in the North Dakota pipeline protest, in the struggle to overcome the desperate hopelessness of the people of Flint, Michigan, in the new climate agreement, and in the proposed carbon tax on the ballot in Washington State. I see it in our US presidential election and our politics, in the way people are groping for something, anything that might show that someone has some influence on the system of power that is gobbling us up one by one, day by day, without blinking. But I, for one, am shuddering. And perhaps shuttering.

Ok, so I have to lay the obvious out there – on top of the three weeks of some virus tearing me down, it’s all getting to me. It does indeed sometimes seem somewhat hopeless. To me, an individual, all this makes me feel powerless. My conscious and unconscious selves have slowly moved in harmony in one direction (finally!) – unfortunately, it’s been towards an incredibly uncomfortable, even painful, feeling of inertia. But I know it’s not just me. Apparently psychologists are reporting a much higher percent of patients feeling stressed as a result of this election (and I’m guessing it’s more than just this election, as evidenced by the public’s desire for an “outsider” candidate). We are all feeling it one way or another. The System Reset button is on our consciousness. We don’t know where it is or what it does or what it looks like, but we hope it’s out there.

What happens next?

One of the six primary Life’s Principles (LP) in biomimicry is “Integrate Development with Growth.” What does that mean? It means don’t grow 300 feet tall without simultaneously investing in your root structure as you grow or you’re sure to fall over. It means you can’t evolve a democracy without simultaneously investing in educating the entire population about democracy. It means when you press the System Reset button, make sure you’ve got the support system to back you up, or your turn with the button will fail.

It also means before we reset the whole system, let’s try resetting smaller systems first, one at a time. And let’s combine and leverage these smaller alternatives as we go to create a larger, more complex robust system. Then when we finally find and hammer that System Reset button with enthusiasm, perhaps we will see a real shift.

So what are these smaller alternative systems? We can see and feel that there has to be something better than the current paradigms that results in us poisoning ourselves, tearing down our human dignity, throwing our entire planet out of balance. But the alternatives – real answers to satisfying our needs with truly sustainable solutions – often elude our imagination. Too often we find ourselves stuck in the rut of resource minimization as our only path forward. What are the opportunities? What if examples for alternative systems are already out there? And how do we find them?

Biomimicry and #SystemReset

Each design challenge exists in context – a system that surrounds it that includes both direct and/or indirect connections with raw material sourcing, transportation, manufacturing, retailing, marketing, distribution, consumption and disposal. It also includes cultural norms and deep-seated assumptions that we often don’t even question until someone designs something that flies in the face of those same assumptions. Biomimicry helps us to break down those assumptions and focus in on the true goal of a design – the need the design is addressing – a.k.a., the function.

Biomimicry focuses on function – function is the bridge between human design and biology that allows knowledge transfer to happen. Which function you choose to research and pursue will determine to a large extent the potential breadth of impact of your biomimetic design solution. Are you looking to redesign a well, or are you looking to redesign people’s access to water? Are you looking to redesign a light bulb or are you looking to illuminate?

Choosing a function that contributes to a product design will result in a redesigned product. Choosing a function that forms the core definition of a product design need will result in the potential for not only a completely redesigned product, but also a redesigned product ecosystem, with ripple effects into complimentary goods and services systems.

product-category-ecosystem

In the Constantinos Markides and Paul Geroski 2005 book, Fast Second, they discuss how the culmination of the “radical innovation” process results in a “dominant design.” A dominant design “defines what a product is and what its core features are. It is, if you like, a platform, from which come a wide range of product variants that are distinguishable from each other without seeming to be fundamentally different.” (p. 52) The dominant design is the category of products we think of when we hear “TV”, “car” or “fan.”  The term “product” here can even apply to systems – such as our systems of politics, financial markets and economic system, although obviously the ecosystem surrounding that “product” would be represented somewhat differently.

When we hear “lighting” we think light bulbs, and can probably name several kinds of bulbs – incandescent, fluorescent, LED, halogen, etc., and many brands like Phillips, Sylvania and more. But what is the function of lighting? To illuminate. What if we could find other ways of illuminating that don’t look or operate anything like a light bulb? And what if we took it one step further and asked about how the lighting product is made – materials, manufacturing, source of power for use, and disposal? Now we are starting to rethink an entire system.

When biomimicry thinking is used in the design process and the right questions are asked that get at the core function of the challenge and how that product is made, the potential for coming up with entirely new approaches with entirely new product ecosystems while still meeting existing needs is great.

Brief examples

Choosing a function that improves the functionality of an existing design without fundamentally changing the core features limits its disruptive impact within the product category. For example, if you redesign the structure of a water bottle using biomimicry with a function of reducing material use without sacrificing strength of the structure, your impact will be limited to reducing the amount of raw and manufactured materials used, retooling for production, and increasing the efficiency of distribution (weight is reduced, resulting in increased fuel efficiency of transportation). While these efficiency gains are important, they do not fundamentally change the access and method of delivery of water to people for consumption.

product-category-ecosystem-vitalis

However, when you start to think about the central function of a challenge along with each part of the product ecosystem, the impacts change dramatically. Take the vaccine thermo-stabilization technology solutions from Stabilitech and Nova Laboratories, Ltd, which rethink the dominant design in the industry for thermoregulation of live vaccines – that the only way to keep them alive is refrigeration throughout the supply chain. The Stabilitech and Nova Labs technologies are based on anhydrobiosis – a natural process that occurs in plants and animals during times of drought in which the water within cells is replaced with a sugar solution that thickens to a point of solidifying as a glass, protecting the cells until water is available again. Their technologies achieve thermoregulation protection for live vaccines and other thermo-sensitive pharmaceuticals using this same concept. The technologies require no refrigeration during their life cycles (they can withstand heat and freezing temperatures) and no lengthy reconstitution before injection.

The potential magnitude of impact of this approach to thermoregulation for vaccine stabilization technologies can be found throughout the product category ecosystem, from raw materials (non-toxic and inexpensive sugars), to manufacturing processes, distribution (no refrigeration required throughout the product life cycle, reducing storage and transportation costs and expanding the reach of vaccines into third world countries), and use (vaccines and other pharmaceuticals are not thrown out due to fear of exposure to temperatures outside of the accepted range, and rehydration of the vaccine is instant). Depending on the delivery mechanism of these technologies, the disposal of the product might also produce less waste and close the loop.

product-category-ecosystem-vaccines
In addition, not only is the ecosystem surrounding this technology disrupted, but the complimentary goods and services are impacted as well, particularly with respect to all services associated with refrigeration – the refrigeration product manufacturers, energy companies, thermo-regulated storage and transport suppliers, etc. are rendered irrelevant with respect to these products. By redefining the dominant approach to thermoregulation of vaccines and pharmaceuticals, the entire product category ecosystem and more is impacted.

Searching for other #SystemResets

As you can see, your choice of function to solve for in any design challenge affects the potential impact that solution has on a product category ecosystem. If you are looking to create solutions that are not just “disruptive” but rather radically change the entire product category ecosystem – initiate a system reset – start with an approach that rethinks the core features that define a product category to redefine the dominant design.

Using biomimicry (including the innovation methodology and Life’s Principles) to solve for that central function while looking at the entire life-cycle that surrounds the product allows innovators to quickly find existing working whole-system solutions as starting points to create viable alternative human product category system solutions. The sooner we can begin to rethink and impact multiple systems which in turn have an expanding and overlapping ripple effect beyond the product categories, the greater chance we have of turning the tide against existing paradigms that do not support life.

In Parts 2, 3 and 4 of this #SystemReset series, I’ll describe additional biomimetic solutions that represent paradigm shifts in their industries – designs that begin to address and impact whole systems change for different product category ecosystems and beyond, including carbon-sequestering plastics made from air pollution, non-toxic fire retardants made from food stuffs, and bacteria management through structure instead of chemicals.

It’s important to recognize that creating alternative systems is a serious challenge, as systems often resist change. But actually coming up with and developing alternatives is the first step. Second step might be to quantify more fully the broader potential impacts of these alternative systems (i.e., conducting a life-cycle or cradle-to-cradle analysis of not only the product itself, but of the whole industry and the impact of potential changes brought about by these alternatives). Third, we need to figure out how to disrupt systems. The more we can do this, the greater the support system we create for large-scale change when we find and push that System Reset button.

Biomimicry & the Built Environment: Designing Ecosystem Functions Back into our Cities

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Morton Arboretum, Lisle, Illinois

“The evaporation to precipitation ratio in our bioregion is 1:1. That means, all rain that falls evaporates back into the air,” said Jim Patchett of Conservation Design Forum. Stunned, I asked the obvious next question, How in the world was our region in northern Illinois so rich in groundwater supplies? What, does it just pull it out of thin air? Well, actually, yes.

In prairies, life holds onto water as long as possible because without doing so summer heat and drought would result in death. As Jim explained, turns out prairie ecosystems solved for this problem in a few different ways. First, prairie plants hold on to stormwater – the runoff from a prairie ecosystem is extremely low, in some places virtually non-existent. And two other processes are occurring – condensation in which water close to the ground falls onto plant and soil surfaces where it can be absorbed, and the capture and reabsorption of water released during the respiration (breathing) of plant roots. Over time, the collection and subsequent channeling of water deep underground creates a net positive balance of water in the ecosystem, resulting in a reservoir plants can tap into during times of drought.

As I mentioned in my last post, people working on drinking water supplies in the Chicago region know that the numbers that play out into the future are dire – there is simply not enough groundwater (in addition to our federally-limited allotment of Lake Michigan water) to support a growing urban and suburban population, and pollution is increasingly concentrated in the existing groundwater supplies. On the flip side, stormwater experts are grappling with the increasing intensity of stormwater events, resulting often in a failure of stormwater infrastructure systems to accommodate the increased flow. These systems were designed and built to capture and shed an amount of water based on the historical intensity of rain events and assumptions (which were underestimated) about the growing percentage of impermeable surfaces – and of course not based on predicted future storm intensity trends influenced by climate change.

Putting these two challenges in one paragraph makes you wonder – if we have so much rain that we can’t shed it fast enough, yet our water supply is dwindling….why are we sending our water to the Gulf of Mexico? Add to that the ratio of 1:1 of evaporation and precipitation in native ecosystems (and I’m curious if that ratio changes with an increase in impermeable surfaces, turf grass and agriculture), and it’s clear it’s not just a matter of over-consumption and leaks. It’s a complete failure to understand and then take into account the limitations and functioning of our local water cycles in the design of human water management systems. Our regional water systems therefore fail to ensure sustainability and resiliency of both human and non-human systems in the long run.

Our Shared Story of Ecosystem Disruption

Some version of this story is happening everywhere. As we change the landscape with our modern built environment, we continue to disrupt systems and push the boundaries ecosystems manage to survive within. In some cases, those cycles are now simply broken and the repercussions are slowly (and sometimes not so slowly) unfolding. And while advocates riding the resiliency wave – and sometimes eschewing the sustainability wave – might point out that nature is constantly adapting to changing conditions (what we refer to as dynamic nonequilibrium), so as long as we have resilient strategies in place we’ll figure it out too. Nothing ever stays the same and complex adaptive systems are masters at absorbing impacts and coming back perhaps slightly different, but just as resilient over time. What is there to “sustain” if nothing lasts forever? So things will change but we’ll be ready. Mother Nature give us your best shot! We can learn to adapt, right?

The answer to that in my mind is a big fat Maybe. While certainly our human systems can learn significant lessons from ecosystem resilience, all of this resides within a larger context, which is defined by the limits and boundaries of the system. Our Earth has not always been this way – life has slowly over time and helped to create the planetary conditions we know and love (and need for our survival) today. Systems at all levels have evolved over time to be both sustainable and resilient within the limitations presented by their relevant operating conditions. What we do know is that if an ecosystem is thrown way out of balance (which may be a cumulative result of small events over decades (short in geologic time), or a sudden major disturbance), the system – at the local, regional or planetary scale – can suddenly shift into another state altogether (called an alternative stable state) and won’t go back.

And while it could be that we will learn to adapt to this new alternative state of the natural world, it could also be that we will not be able to adapt fast enough. We simply don’t know what that new alternate state might be. Either way it will have (and is currently having) enormous impacts on all of humanity. And we are doing it to ourselves! It’s not like we are helpless in the face of a fickle and retributive Mother Nature – we are doing this to the planet, and therefore to ourselves. Which means, of course, that it’s possible to change our actions to achieve a different outcome.

A Regenerative Mindset and Approach

I love this quote from the book Designing for Hope (2015) by Dominique Hes and Chrisna du Plessis in reference to a new interpretation of sustainability, the “ecological worldview”:

[Environmental sustainability] is the foundation on which the pillars of social, economic, technical or institutional sustainability are constructed, not just another pillar [of sustainability]. Ecological sustainability is therefore a survival imperative, whereas social and economic sustainability (and the definitions thereof) are ethical issues, the resolution of which can support or destroy ecological sustainability. (p.41)

So how do we change the way we design so that we improve ecological sustainability first and foremost in a way that also strengthens (while perhaps shifting) our social and economic systems at the same time? The regenerative design examples included in Designing for Hope offer incredible insight into how a mental shift – designing from a place of understanding that humans are a part of, not separate from, other life systems – can change everything. It allows us to see that our built environment has the potential to participate – support and give back – to the life systems that support us (also check out Janis Birkeland’s Positive Development: From Virtuous Cycles to Virtuous Cycles through Built Environment Design (2008)).

It also then enables us to go beyond our current boxed-in thinking about our built environment. With respect to Chicago’s water challenges, the water conversation on the supply side focuses on plugging leaks and reducing consumption (based on the mindset of “doing less bad”), while the stormwater questions focus on increasing green infrastructure and detaining water in place and releasing it slowly enough that wastewater plants aren’t overwhelmed.

But if we take into account our understanding of how a prairie was net positive for water (right here under the same conditions), something we are not even close to achieving with our city water systems, we realize the next obvious questions we urgently need to ask are – How can we first hold onto rainwater as long as possible and not let it escape the region to level that ratio of 1:1 so we aren’t operating at a deficit? And since we aren’t going to bulldoze Chicago to restore a prairie, how can we replicate the prairie ecosystem processes of condensation and capture of respiration in our built environment so we come out ahead? And how do we know when we are actually “sustainable” with respect to our local ecosystem?

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Bullfrog, Cook County Forest Preserve

Using Biomimicry to Evaluate Success of a Regenerative Built Environment

That last question might be hardest to answer. However using the biomimicry methodology we can begin to collect information from biological research on the numbers associated with how water is managed in a prairie ecosystem to create system-wide design goals. For example, if basically all stormwater that falls on a prairie is captured and held within the ecosystem, this gives us a baseline from which to measure our stormwater systems and evaluate if they are contributing positively or negatively to the successful functioning of water cycles within our ecosystem. Gathering many of these metrics (e.g., for evaporation, condensation, capture of water from respiration, groundwater recharge rates, etc.) can help us start to reevaluate our water systems as a whole. We can then begin to rethink and redesign our water systems to reflect our understanding of the limitations presented by our local operating conditions and knowledge gained from solutions embodied in native ecosystems.

Janine Benyus describes these metrics as “ecological performance standards” (EPS). One benefit I see with EPS is that they deliver goals which designers, architects, planners and engineers can try to meet with existing off-the-shelf technology (before more advanced innovations slowly make their way into the market). Of course, the risk might be that we design only for one metric without understanding the need for a holistic design that gets as close as possible to every metric that represents successful functioning of the system as a whole. And certainly an iterative process that allows our built environment to adapt and respond to the system as it is restored (or perhaps disrupted) will enable us to incorporate new technology and approaches as our understanding and capabilities evolve. Existing efforts to use EPS to address water challenges such as the Seattle Urban Greenprint project, Biomimicry South Africa’s Genius of Space and Durban Urban Resilience Framework projects, Terrapin Bright Green’s project in Buffalo, New York, and Biomimicry 3.8’s current project with Interface all aim to establish what it means and how to apply EPS on a city scale or project site. We are aiming to start a similar effort in Chicago.

We can of course also use the biomimicry methodology to solve for challenges that current design approaches and technology don’t address (or don’t do very well). Within every ecosystem there are plentiful examples of how organisms deal with the same operating conditions – and therefore challenges – that we are trying to solve for. Each of those species presents an opportunity for us to learn a new design principle upon which we might base a new innovative design. This process of looking at local organisms, including the deep patterns we find among them, to solve local built environment problems enables our built environment to be more attuned to place, and thus more likely to be able to sustainably function long term as well as respond to disturbances. In biomimicry we call this “Genius of Place”.

We must take the next step in our built environment design to think about the larger ecological, social and economic systems within which our designs reside. This step must be based on an underpinning of acknowledgement that not only is our success dependent upon the success of thriving ecosystems, but also that we have a direct and crucial role to play in contributing to the functioning of the system and the creation of opportunities for life to thrive. Therefore, it’s not enough to “do less bad” when it comes to our built environment. We need to actively restore and regenerate the functionality and resilience of local ecosystems to try to mitigate the radical shifts of larger planetary systems in motion, while at the same time shore up the resilience of human systems. Because change is coming to both.

 

  • How do your local city water systems either work with or against your local water cycles?
  • What can you learn from your local ecosystem and species about how to effectively manage water on site in a way that benefits both human and non-human communities?
  • What system metrics can your community strive to meet?