Biomimicry

by Janine M Benyus

  But what about the huge drain coming from energy-intensive manufacturing? Unlike the slow burn of organic engines (cells), we are always beating, heating, and treating our materials to form them the way we want, wielding high fluxes of energy that would never be tolerated in natural systems. If the dreams of biomimetic materials scientists are realized, high energies will no longer be synonymous with manufacturing. Instead, our processes will mimic those of spiders, abalones, blue mussels, and other organisms on an energy budget.

  Lessons from natural systems can also help us decide what to use our energy for. As Amory Lovins says, “If I were to come back in fifty years and find that we had extremely efficient factories making napalm and throwaway beer cans, I’d be very disappointed, because it would mean that we hadn’t addressed a parallel agenda of what’s worth doing with all that energy.” Natural systems use their energy to maximize diversity so they can be more efficient in terms of mineral and nutrient recycling. Perhaps we should reevaluate what we are maximizing (throughput) and take a look at optimizing instead.

  4. Optimize Rather Than Maximize.

  A field of annual plants is, like we are, pushing throughput. It’s turning nutrients into biomass, and just as quickly, it’s turning biomass over, releasing plants back to the system when they die at the end of the year. Next year, the plants start from scratch again, accumulating the nutrients they need to jump through the hoop of rapid growth.

  In contrast, the mature system keeps the bulk of its materials and nutrients “on the stump” instead of passing nutrients through to decay each year, most of the biomass stays put. In the early years, members of the plant community grow quickly (that’s why tree rings are widest at the center of the tree). In later years, as more trees and vegetation come to share the space, the growing slows down, and the productivity per unit of biomass—the transformation rate of materials being made into products—slows down.

  This journey to a mature system always follows the same pattern. The emphasis on maximizing throughput and offspring shifts to an emphasis on optimizing—closing nutrient and mineral flows, and making sure one or two offspring survive. In a mature mode, organisms are rewarded for being efficient and learning to do more with less. Those that survive are those that live within their means. Slowing down flow rates also leads to overall system stability. As Cooper says, “One of the reasons ecosystems are so resilient is that they aren’t doing anything in a hurry. The slower the flow rates, the more you can modulate the controls without wild fluctuations.” Being able to control the system is important; it means the whole community is able to change and adapt as the environment demands.

  Optimizing, Not Maximizing: The Lessons Learned

  Our industrial ecosystems are currently in arrested adolescence; they are still based on high rates of productivity and growth—a steady stream of materials moving as quickly as possible out of the Earth and into shiny new things. Eighty-five percent of manufactured items quickly become waste. In fact, when you add municipal and industrial waste together, every man, woman, and child in the United States produces twice his or her own weight in waste every day. Together, it’s enough to fill two Louisiana Superdomes daily.

  The lesson is to slow down the throughput of materials, emphasizing the quality rather than quantity of new things. Cooper says, “As the natural system matures, it redefines its concept of success. That’s what fitness is all about. In today’s economy, our definition of success is rapid growth—if you grow faster than your competitor, you win. In tomorrow’s world, winning will mean being more competitive, doing more with less, and being more efficient than your competitor. Companies won’t need to be as big—in fact, it might be more profitable to be small and produce high-quality products and services.”

  This trend toward optimizing rather than maximizing will reverse a well-established tide. The Industrial Revolution really got cooking when Fordist assembly-line manufacturing was invented. Items that had once been hand-crafted could now be mass-produced. While this led to affordability, it also led to cheapness in products, and ultimately to the disposable, ticky-tacky sameness that we are drowning in today.

  In the 1960s, Japan launched a so-called Quality Revolution (based largely on efficiency expert Edwards Deming’s ideas, which were initially ignored in this country). They proved it was possible to boost quality, productivity, and profitability at the same time. In the last decade or so, designers have spotted the quality trend in other countries as well—durable items, made with care and imbued with personality, are being increasingly favored over cheap, ubiquitous imitations. We can at least hope that this is a sign of a transition to a mature marketplace.

  Another sign of maturity is the slow but increasing acceptance of “factory refurbished” products (e.g., rebuilt engines, factory-serviced stereos and computers). Rather than trash a model because a new one has appeared, it would be much better for the environment if we could see how long we could keep the existing model in the marketplace. This would shift the emphasis from manufacturing a new model every year to manufacturing longer-lived designs and creating subsidiary companies devoted to remanufacturing and upgrading. As Allenby says, “Our economic system is geared to the sale of many widgets. If we change that to the maintenance of many widgets, we change what we care about.”

  5. Use Materials Sparingly.

  Organisms build for durability, but they don’t overbuild. They fit form to function, building exactly what is needed, with the bare minimum of materials and fuss. Honeycombs are an example of a structure that encloses the maximum amount of space with the minimum amount of walling material. With their antennae alone, honeybees sculpt every six-sided room to within 2 percent of “specs,” thus achieving strength without squandering wax. Bone is another example of form fitting function. Despite its light weight, bone is arranged in a design that resists breaking, even when stretched or compressed. The bones of birds epitomize this lesson—their strong, airily hollow skulls are what one engineer called “a poem in bone.”

  Organisms have also evolved to make the most of every design decision, by having one structure serve not just one but two or three functions. This constant adapting and reassessing of material use means that fewer devices have to be built for survival. Being good at this game gives organisms an edge, the difference between propagating your genes, or taking a one-way slide to hereditary oblivion.

  Using Materials Sparingly: The Lessons Learned

  “Green design” engineers, like equilibrium organisms, also love to do more with less. The current trend toward “dematerialization” allows companies to use less material to produce a lighter, smaller, sleeker product that performs many functions. Computers that fit in your palm and all-in-one fax/printer/copier/scanners are cases in point. Even heavy-duty products made of metal are getting thinner and stronger. Car bodies have shed about nine hundred pounds since 1975, and testosterone is no longer needed to crush a beer can with your bare hands. Creating a synergy between two types of materials—a composite—is another way to gain strength without adding bulk. Glass fibers woven through plastic make for stronger boat bodies, while carbon fibers in graphite give the Stealth bomber its edge.

  The ultimate in dematerialization is a movement that may be described as “leasing as a way of life.” Proponents of the so-called functional economy claim quite rightly that people don’t want to own a heater, a refrigerator, or a TV; what they really want is heating, refrigeration, and entertainment. When they buy a CD, they want to hear music, not own a shiny disc.

  Brad Allenby explained, “Imagine how things would change if the only physical objects you bought were those you wanted to own for sentimental or aesthetic reasons. Everything else around your house would be leased as a service. Various providers would be responsible for installing, maintaining, upgrading, and eventually replacing your appliances, your furniture, even your cookware.”

  Since the company would be responsible for uninterrupted service, the products it made would be re
liable, heavy duty, and easy to repair and upgrade. “It would be like those old AT&T phones which were designed to last forty years,” says Bob Laudise. “Back then, designers would trade off failure rates and service rates—they were responding to a different set of incentives. Now companies hope their product burns out so they can sell the consumer a new one.”

  In “leasing as a way of life,” planned obsolescence would be, well…obsolete. Allenby tells me what an evening might be like in the functional economy: You drive home in your leased car, which was tuned up for you while you were at work. The mechanic came to your company parking lot, part of the service option that convinced you to renew your contract with this company. At home, you find that your well-built, energy-efficient refrigerator is keeping your foods even crisper than before. The service provider upgraded the coils last week so they could claim to have the most energy-efficient refrigeration on the market—something every company is struggling to provide these days.

  You head to your leased stereo/TV/computer console and select some tunes from the digital collection of music you own rights to. When you bought the rights, you dialed into a digital server (a huge computer that holds all music archives) and downloaded the music onto your computer/player. There were no retail outlets, no CD jewel boxes, no packaging, no cash registers, no cardboard packing boxes piled in a Dumpster outside a neon-striped building.

  While you’re listening, you tell the computer to download the newspaper of your choice onto a thin portable reading tablet—or even better, you have your computer read it to you as you cook dinner on your leased range. After dinner, you hop on the Internet and request information about the latest generation of modems. You decide to upgrade your transmission speed and call in your order. Within seconds, the software upgrade arrives digitally through the wires, and your machine signals that the new modem speed is installed. No software store to go to, no packages to dispose of, no bulky manuals to clog your bookcase. I could get used to that.

  The obvious question is, what happens to the companies that used to manufacture the CDs and other objects designed for obsolescence? What about the sales clerks in the software store? Allenby and his colleague Thomas Graedel, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs, recognize the dilemma. “A system that’s geared for maximum-velocity throughput is quite different from one based on extending a product’s life cycle or replacing products with services. We’re going to have to decide which system we want.”

  Or, I think, we could wait for dwindling resources and overflowing landfills to decide for us.

  6. Don’t Foul Their Nests.

  Organisms must eat, breathe, and sleep right in their manufacturing facility, their habitat; they can’t afford to poison themselves. As a result, even poisonous snakes don’t store their toxins in bulk; instead they create small batches only when needed. Nor do organisms use high heats, strong chemicals, or high pressures to manufacture as we do. They know that a high flux, or energy out of place, can contribute to nest fouling. Instead, organisms build their bodies using catalysts and self-assembly techniques, riding the free roller coaster of physics to put together adaptive materials. Moderation in energy and material use is the order of the day. By not stressing the supply lines or cleanup mechanisms in their environment, organisms win the right to keep on making a living there.

  But life does more than simply keep its nest clean; it actually creates the conditions necessary for life. We are the only species that seems oblivious to this fact, and our insistence on polluting the lungs and filters of our world is evidence of our dense denial.

  Not Fouling Our Nest: The Lessons Learned

  It’s easy to say, “Don’t emit pollutants at rates greater than the Earth’s capacity to assimilate them,” but just how do we hold our industrial breath? Perhaps the best way to keep from fouling our air, water, and soil is to stop producing toxins, or abnormally high fluxes of any sort, up front. Industrial ecologists call it pollution prevention or precycling.

  The Minnesota-based corporate giant, 3M, jumped on the pollution prevention bandwagon twenty years ago with an employee suggestion program called 3Ps (Pollution Prevention Pays). According to their own accounting, 3Ps has saved them an estimated $750 million and spared the Earth another 1.2 billion pounds of waste. All together, the company has adopted 4,350 cleaner-production projects in categories such as product reformulation, process modification, equipment redesign, recycling, and the recovery of waste materials for resale.

  In each case, says 3M representative Jo Ann Broom, eliminating toxins from processing proved cheaper than cleaning up the toxins afterward. The first few years saw tremendous reductions in pollution, as companies changed procedures that were easy to change, referred to in the industry as “low-hanging fruit.” Reaching beyond this point, like retrieving the topmost apples from a tree, may involve more of an effort. Nevertheless, 3M announced in 1988 that it intends to “cut all hazardous and non-hazardous releases to the air, water, and land by 90 percent and reduce the generation of waste 50 percent by the year 2000 (base year 1990). The ultimate goal is to reduce emissions to as close to zero as possible.” Some other companies are following 3M’s self-policing suit. Monsanto says it will reduce emissions of toxic chemicals by 90 percent by 1992 and reduce all waste by 70 percent by 1995. By 1993, Du Pont had already met its goal of reducing toxic air emissions by 60 percent from the base year of 1987 and was three quarters of the way toward the goal of reducing airborne carcinogens by 90 percent by the year 2000.

  In the meantime, until we can completely eliminate or find a substitute for toxins, industrial ecologists are recommending we follow the “snake-venom law”: manufacture chemicals in small doses where and when you need them, so you won’t have to worry about storage or leakage. It’s called “chemicals-on-demand,” and industry’s “venom glands” are small chemical generators built right into the assembly line. AT&T, for example, uses an on-site electrolysis machine that produces arsine (a dangerous gas) from its less harmful cousin, arsenic. Since the gas is produced right where it’s needed, it saves AT&T the cost of transporting arsine (which is subject to dangerous, time-consuming, legally strict handling procedures) and averts the risk of spillage. Other extremely hazardous chemicals that would be good candidates for on-demand generators are vinyl chloride, methylisocyanate, phosgene, hydrazine, and ethylene chlorohydrin.

  Another form of spillage is the “halo” of waste that occurs whenever chemicals such as paints or coatings are sprayed onto objects. Bob Laudise told me about a new application technique called molecular beam epitaxy that lays down extremely thin coats and directs the material where it should go and nowhere else. Costs to the Earth and to the company are reduced.

  Another movement that is reducing waste is “just-in-time” manufacturing. In Japan, JIT factories are ringed by suppliers that are all connected by a computerized supply network. The suppliers make only what the factory needs on a hour-by-hour basis, so there is less warehouse storage and overproduction of goods. Levi-Strauss is trying the same technique, installing computers in its retail stores so it knows exactly how many jeans have sold and how many need to be made that day.

  One last trend that would put us closer to making things the way nature does is the decentralization of production facilities. The most sensible place for this to occur would be in energy production. As Amory Lovins points out, we don’t crowd all the dairy cows into one state and ship milk from there. Milk is perishable, so decentralized facilities make sense. Electricity, he argues, is perishable in its own way (it leaks through wires, and because of electrical resistance, it takes energy to move energy). It would make more sense for energy to be produced at small stations, or even on the rooftop of your home. The smaller the production load and the shorter the “commute,” the less likely it is that large, nest-fouling fluxes or massive breakdowns will occur.

  7. Don’t Draw Down Resources.

  Organisms in a mature ecosystem live on harvestable interest,
not principal. The best predator, for instance, is the one that doesn’t completely eliminate its prey. Likewise, the prudent parasite doesn’t kill its host. Given the room, buffaloes will roam methodically rather than “nub down” their grassy prairies; giraffes will wander from acacia to acacia; and even voracious gorillas will move slowly through the jungle, allowing food plants to grow back in behind them. All have learned, through the wisdom of their genes, that gouging their growing stock is not a good idea.

  Once again, the idea of organisms as mortal enemies locked in a zero-sum game just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. There are negative feedbacks in nature that keep organisms from completely chewing off the hand that feeds them. Namely, as food sources start to run out, they become harder to find, and the searching takes precious energy. Moving to an alternate food source is usually easier for the animal, and it allows the renewable stock to renew itself.

  As far as nonrenewable resources like metals or minerals go, organisms don’t use a whole lot of those to begin with, which may be a very big hint. The tiny helping of minerals taken up by organisms is replenished either through biological processes or through geological processes, such as uplifting, which brings buried minerals to the surface.

  Not Drawing Down Resources: The Lessons Learned

  Two corollaries to the lesson “Don’t emit pollutants faster than the Earth can handle them” would have to be:

  Don’t use nonrenewable resources faster than you can develop substitutes.