Author and biologist Janine Benyus coined the term biomimicry more than a decade ago. Since then, the mother of nature-inspired innovation has seen her movement blossom.
By Carole Ruffin
Running shoes fashioned after goat hooves. Butterfly-like iridescent cosmetics. Insect inspired robots. Might sound odd, but companies around the globe are looking to nature for technological innovation.
Nike developed all-weather running shoes for various terrains. The result – ACG Air Dri-Goat running shoes, which have an outsole that mimics goat-hoof traction.
Procter & Gamble, with zoologist Andrew Parker, analyzed the iridescent colors of a butterfly to create a new line of lipstick and eye shadow.
And NASA’s Ames Research Center developed an eight-legged robot that mimics a scorpion’s gait.
All of these owe their origins in part to biologist Janine Benyus, the mother of biomimicry – a movement that meshes environmental sustainability and innovation.
Janine Benyus
Benyus’ book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature generated unexpected corporate interest shortly after its publication in 1997. Companies with diverse dilemmas called her to help design eco-friendly solutions in “real time.”
So she created the Biomimicry Guild, a corporate consultancy that brings biologists to the design table. But the guild’s goal transcends deriving innovation from nature. Benyus sees biomimicry as a way to achieve environmental sustainability.
“The more our world functions like the natural world,” she says, “the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone.”
From her Montana home nestled in the Bitterroot Valley, Benyus shares with me her passion to restore Earth through biomimicry. Armed with degrees in forestry and literature from Rutgers University, Benyus concedes she is far from her envisioned career as an author.
Yet she couldn’t be happier knowing that the biomimicry movement has taken root and how her career has blossomed. She was one of Time magazine’s International Heroes of the Environment in 2007. She also has received the Rachel Carson Environmental Ethics Award and the Lud Browman Award for Science Writing.
She’s putting some finishing touches on her next book, Nature’s 100 Best, slated for later this year, which identifies 100 innovations in nature as a resource for companies. With a team of scientists, Benyus’ research unearthed more than 2,100 nature-inspired ideas. The team will post these on asknature.org.
“Biomimicry is the conscious emulation of life’s genius.” – Janine Benyus
She’s particularly impressed that eco-friendly is evolving beyond just a marketing ploy.
Biomimicry is not about taking a finished product and touching it with a “green wand,” she says, but rather mimicking the core functions of nature to create a product that is sustainable from the inside out.
Systems and mechanisms, such as a leaf absorbing sunlight or a spider spinning silk, involve highly sophisticated engineering principles. Benyus says the way a plant or an animal accomplishes a task is always done in way that supports its life.
Biomimicry, says Benyus, is “the conscious emulation of life’s genius.”
If we can replicate these natural systems, she adds, our products would be intrinsically sustainable and reflect the elegant, sophisticated solutions found in nature.
“In a society accustomed to dominating or ‘improving’ nature,” she says, “this respectful imitation is a radically new approach, a revolution really.”
Aping Nature
Mercedes-Benz bionic car
From boxfish to boxcar
With the aid of bionics experts, researchers at DaimlerChrysler (now just Chrysler) created a car inspired by boxfish, which use skeletal
adjustments to move efficiently. Boxfish put all their structural and scale heft where loads are greatest, and thin out or even “kill” areas that don’t require support. DaimlerChrysler developed a computer simulation called soft kill option. The result is a super strong, super light car.
Power plastic
Power plant(s)
Photosynthesis is when a plant turns sunlight into energy. Australia-based Konarka Technologies Inc.’s product mimics this by using versatile thin-film solar cells in strips of plastic. Its Power Plastic thin-film solar cell uses a wider range of the light spectrum than conventional solar technology. It is not solely dependent on sunlight and can be integrated into a variety of products to reduce power usage.
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Bright & shiny
Think the iridescent color of the Morpho butterfly’s wing is the result of pigment? Think again. It’s due to layers of thin scales that bend and
refract light. The resulting color is four times brighter than pigment. California-based JDSU applied this structure to its ChromaFlair paint, made of microscopic, microthin film flakes that refract light to create color. The company says it’s brighter than pigment-based paints and won’t fade.
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Red means no grow
Red algae
Not all bacteria are bad. And bad bacteria can develop immunity to anti-bacterial soaps and disinfectants – not good in, say, hospital settings. What to do? Australia-based Biosignal‘s director Peter Steinberg turned to red algae for help. Biosignal technology prevents or disrupts resistant biofilms – the noxious slime formed when bacteria congregate – without actually killing bacteria.
