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May 19, 2009 Volume LXXII, No. 148 ©2009 Mustang Daily “Are you degrading men again?”
opinion/editorial mustang daily
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Editor in chief: Marlize van Romburgh Managing Editor: Giana Magnoli
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Innovation reliant on nature Biomimicry can operate on any scale, from super-adhesive tape that imitates a gecko’s skin to a high-rise building that imitates a termite mound for passive air-conditioning. Humans have been getting ideas from other animals and plants as long as we’ve been around. As Leonardo DaVinci once said, “Those who are inspired by a model other than nature, a mistress above all masters, are laboring in vain.” But historically speaking, its application has been haphazard, and has not particularly been used for green design. Biomimicry (usually called bionics in Europe) is the redesign of industrial processes and products based on new understandings of how natural systems and creatures accomplish similar ends — and it may be the most promising branch of the growing sustainable design movement. When well done, it’s not slavish imitation; it is inspiration, using the principles which nature has demonstrated to be successful design strategies. For instance, in the early days of mechanized flight, the best designs were not the ornithopters, which most completely imitated birds, but the fixed-wing craft that used the principle of airfoil cross-section in their wings. Biomimicry can operate on any scale, from super-adhesive tape that imitates a gecko’s skin to a high-rise building that imitates a termite mound for passive air-conditioning. So here’s a quick primer on what it is, why it’s useful, and why you’ll be seeing a lot more of it in years to come. The leader of this growing school of thought is Janine Benyus (check out her amazing speeches on TED Talks). As Benyus puts it, “The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth.This is the real news of biomimicry: After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival.” The core of Benyus’ ideas is treating nature as model, measure and mentor. Nature as model means that we can get ideas from organisms to solve our problems — whatever we are trying to do, there are usually several organisms that have evolved successful strategies. Nature as measure means we can look to the natural world to see what is possible. For instance, spider silk is stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar, but the spider is a “factory” smaller than your little finger, which uses no boiling sulphuric acid or highpressure extruders, and whose only raw materials are crickets and flies. Nature as mentor means we should change our relationship with nature,
cess and system levels, but it can also produce things that nature has never evolved (such as an oddly shaped satellite antenna.) At the base of everything we make is chemistry. The natural world has this incredible recipe book of ways that it goes about reactions. Industrial chemistry heats things up to high temperatures, puts it under enormous pressures and forces molecules together with toxic chemicals. So it’s heat, beat and treat. In the rest of the natural world it’s completely opposite; reactions occur at body temperature in water with simple solvents. Chemists are improving their grasp on the complex organic realm, where material can be built up a few molecules at a time in specific places, effectively growing material rather than having to cut it away. For instance, MIT researchers are attempting to grow batteries like abalone shells grow and are using virus microbes to do it with; carbon nanotubes have also been used to create selfassembling electronics. Other researchers are learning how to get from nanoscale materials to macro-scale products, like the nanotube ribbon which can be produced at seven meters per minute. As our nanotech and biotech capabilities improve, it will become easier and easier to grow things rather than build them. Pollution regulations and growing awarepedro molina newsart ness of resource scarcity are also starting to motivate industry to recognizing that we are part of it, not separate find non-toxic chemistry, which will drive peofrom it; as such, we should treat it as a partner and ple towards chemistry as nature does it, in water, teacher rather than merely a resource-extraction at ambient temperature and pressure. site. Will the chemical market start to go green Biomimicry can be achieved on different levby itself, as other industries are starting to do? els, according to Benyus: form or function, the Not yet. Michael Wilson, a researcher at Univerprocess level and the system level. Biomimetic sity of California, Berkeley, said, “Green chemisforms and functions are the most common and try entrepreneurs have a difficult time breaking they include all of the previous examples. into the market because there are fundamental Biomimetic processes are harder to data gaps in chemical toxicity that prevent buyachieve, but tend to have bigger beners from choosing safer chemicals ... The market efits. Biomimetic systems are closedis therefore operating very inefficiently and will loop lifecycles, where require corrections through public policy.” outputs and by-prodHe continued, “By requiring that producucts become inputs ers generate and distribute standardized, robust for something else. information on chemical toxicity (for use by This may be downstream industry, business, consumers, workwhere nature has ers) we will open new markets for green chemthe most to teach us; istry entrepreneurs.” everything alive is part Wilson was hopeful about the green chemof multiple complex webs of istry busineses he knows, which “have some predator/prey, waste/fertilizer, brilliant products supported by solid data, that parasite/host, etc., only a few of which have reduce costs significantly and also make a subequivalents in modern industry. I would argue stantial environmental contribution.” Some corthat the kind of biomimicry used most frequentporate leaders include Advanced Biocatalytics ly today is actually a fourth level, the design level. and Novozyme. This includes genetic algorithms, and iterative We definitely live in exciting times, don’t we? design (making multiple prototypes, user-testFor more info on biomimicry, check out Asking them to find the favorites, then mixing and Nature.org. matching elements to create another generation of prototypes which are in turn user-tested). Biomimicry on the design level can produce things that are biomimetic on the form/function, pro-
Ben Eckold is a business administration senior, the former president of the Empower Poly Coalition and a Mustang Daily columnist.