WHAT'S BEYOND NATURE?

Janine Benyus

Founder- Biomimicry 3.8, Co-founder - The Biomimicry Institute

Janine Benyus introduced the term Biomimicry, piquing the curiosity of engineers and designers all around the world. Benyus has consulted with companies such as Boeing, Colgate-Palmolive, Nike, and Levi’s to name a few to help them design products and processes that are sustainable and benefit humanity. She is a sought-after speaker, known for her passion and enthusiasm for using biomimicry to create a better future.

The global trend we are experiencing is that biomimicry is here to stay, with nature serving as our mentor rather than a repository of products. What was your most enlightening experience when researching biomimicry?

As a biologist, I assumed that a designer would consult a botanist, and understand how photosynthesis and leaves work if they were going to design a solar cell. After all, we are surrounded by the largest energy system in the world, one that converts sunlight into chemistry. I started looking for the account of the meeting between the maker of solar cells and the botanist, but I was unable to locate it. I realised that our solar cells were ‘completely out’ of physics and science but they were not out of biology and a leaf uses umpteen amounts of physics and quantum mechanics that might be going on, allowing it to capture those photons, nearly two photons have to be captured within femtoseconds of each other.

Be life-friendly.

As a living thing, a leaf can’t undergo any process that might harm it and that was when I began to look at how differently we do things than the rest of the natural world. Another “aha” moment was when I went to a material science research meeting and was surrounded by thousands of people who make materials that designers use such as fibres, plastics, polymers and so on. Those people had a saying ‘Heat, Beat and Treat’. They said that’s the way they make things- they heat them, put them under high pressure and treat them with toxic chemicals in sulphuric acid baths and what not. So there was this idea that the only way to create something new was through toxic, dangerous and industrial processes. and dealing with nature’s hidden geniuses. What inspired you to create a book about biomimicry? How has this field evolved since the book’s publication?

Later on, I realised, not everyone uses the ‘Heat, Beat, and Treat’ method. In a material symposium I visited, they were amazed by nature and used it to its full potential. Spinning spider silk from flies and crickets in water at life-friendly temperatures, making hard ceramics that were two times tougher than our high-tech ceramics that we have in our engines and yet being made in seawater. That’s how far it has come in 25 years.

People from the east are very different from the ones in the west. They believe that nature is a more obvious place to look for guidance. While it wasn’t difficult in the west, there was a lot more human arrogance about how we knew better than nature. With the growth of western industrial culture, we drew more and further away from nature, hoping to escape our link and become independent of it.

I ended up with a cabinet full of research papers after trying to find people who were studying nature in a similar context, only to discover that it was a field with no name. What would nature do in this situation, you might ask as you begin your design process, is what is meant by the term “biomimicry.” It was time to put all of this within the covers of a book. The idea is that after 250 years of western study, these folks sat still, opened their books, and learned from the natural world. And saying ‘how can I emulate you?’. That was something new in the history of science and technology with a new methodology. It inspired me to write and further understand what it meant culturally.

Biomimicry represents us returning to the natural world, going back into our watersheds, back to Earth and saying we have tried to do these technologies on our own and now we are suffering unintended consequences, emergencies of our own making and we are now ready to listen again, emulate what has been here for 3.8 billion years. That stance of humility, seeing nature as a model and mentor has renewed again. It represented such a big change for us culturally.

Your institute, while trying to address key environmental and societal challenges, also encourages nature-inspired start-ups to present their work. How did your organisation decide on the Ray of Hope Prize?

Biomimicry 3.8, our consultancy, works with both small startups and large corporations like Microsoft, Nike, and Interface to bring biology to the design table. Meanwhile, small startups are licensing their innovations to these large corporations, making the field of biomimicry more practical. To further support start-ups across the world, we came up with the Ray of Hope Prize.

We began accepting applications from existing businesses about 4 years ago, and now we get around 200-300 applicants annually. It’s fantastic to see what individuals can actually create, especially since these people are doing what I was writing about. They’re taking the science behind surfaces like the lotus leaf or the anti-reflective moth eye and turning it into real-world applications. One such interesting example is that of Green Pod Laboratories. They examined plant chemistry in India and discovered the pattern by which plants signal one other, resulting in the invention of bio-inspired packaging that releases plant-based volatiles to activate the built-in defence mechanism in fruits and vegetables.

It’s remarkable to see how far biotechnologies have come since 1998. Tina, my business partner at the time and a PhD student, approached me and I told her that people kept calling me, designers and that inventors who needed a biologist. They imagined I had a team of biologists who could teach them about life. Tina suggested we become that company of biologists and teach people.

When biomimicry 3.8 was founded as a consultancy, the term “biomimicry” was concise; nevertheless, it has now become a buzzword. What effect has it had? How do biomimicry and innovators interact? Is it possible for businesses to adopt biomimicry, or is it still a niche?

To democratise biomimicry and give people opportunities to practice it, we founded the institute in 2006. We established a for-profit consultancy in 1998 before founding the institute. We sought to create tools and opportunities, like “Ask Nature,” and design challenges for people of all ages and backgrounds to showcase their work and create a portrait of the biomimicry community. Young people, including university students and start-up businesses, were targeted by the challenges because they had brilliant ideas but lacked the resources.

Ask Nature was founded to help designers, who are not taught biology to obtain the biological information they need while they are creating and ask themselves ‘What would nature do here? How would nature accomplish the function I am trying to accomplish here?’

After all these years, we now know that biomimicry is best carried out with a partner who assists you in gathering data from research papers and connecting it to the needs of the designer to determine how the same effect may be achieved by humans, its end-of-life processes. That, in my opinion, would be biomimicry’s future trajectory.

And so is visible, the number of grants and papers has been growing year after year; yeah, it is a buzzword, but people are genuinely attempting it, and it is working. During the Pandemic, our company unexpectedly boomed. It implies that there was a tipping moment at which firms began to look to us for consulting, particularly for projects involving generous or positive design; nature positive design.

To be effective change agents, designers must consider both their work’s immediate and indirect consequences. A business could be a positive influence. And the growth of new-age firms prepares the way for the birth of a completely new breed of entrepreneur. So, how might businesses function more like (life-sustaining) ecosystems?

A really important tool used in our business is called ‘Life’s Principles’, which is linked with cooperative relationships. We take that seriously and collaborate with companies. There’s a task team in our consultancy that checks whether we are looking at Life Principles or not to ensure creating additions producing to life. For instance, if we know that life works in cycles, we also understand rest and renewal is a really important part of that cycle and hence for the organisation too. They don’t go at full speed all the time, they’ve got periods of dormancy too. We have one day a month marked as a ‘paid renewal day’ which is time off with the only need that you go outdoors for renewal and then tell us. We aim to be more than just carbon neutral; we try to be positive because life does way more than just net zero, life is generously giving away ecosystem services all the time, so coming from that abundant perspective leads us in so many directions!

Biomimicry 3.8 ends up working with multiple companies, while you are a biologist this company would have designers too. How are you able to traverse with them to make sure that your idea is being brought out the best way so they can design the best?

There’s a different working style for various kinds of designers and engineers. Communicating biology is best done visually, it is best done by going outside so we often take people out and run workshops. During workshops we learn about their issues, what they are trying to design, what they need their design to do and what are the operating conditions of their design because that allows us to look at what habitats we should search in the natural world.

We don’t dive deep into what they do exactly, designers are great at painting the picture of their design brief and its function. We simply go ahead and find out what they are already thinking about, look at biology and then deliver them ‘leads’- information that is eligible in person, showing them that biology gives them an opportunity to play with it and grasp the biological phenomenon and then start to design. How do we do it? By introducing a lot of visuals and prototyping, we bring artefacts, like shells and ethers, things that people can get their hands on. Our science communication is very different from what we’re taught. We have learnt what works today and that’s how it’s best done, it’s this iterative process.

Written by Sudiksha Kapa, Ananya Gupta & Suchira Biswas.