5 Biomimicry Inspired Product Designs that are Changing the World.

What can a leaf, a gecko, a whale, a spider web, and a muscle tell us about life-sustaining design? What can we learn from nature? Raise your chins, and get radical with the optimism within you. Negativity and gloom are so last year. Believe, because nature is our solution.  (And you don’t have to be in the purpose marketing, green marketing, eco-marketing, or eco-branding space to understand this.) What can all marketers, brand managers, and designers learn from nature? What can entrepreneurs and well-oiled corporations learn from nature?

This blog explores these questions and points to some answers using 5 examples of Biomimicry in action—nature inspired designs that will change the world as we know it.

Changing the world is all I need for inspiration at work. My team and I at Live Creative Studio —a strategic creative and marketing agency in Durango, Colorado—work with purpose and sustainable brands and are inspired every day. Turns out, we’re not alone—thank you universe! In fact, 90% of Gen Zers think that saving the world is the entire point of life, and that business should take the lead. Oh, that’s beautiful.

How is business taking the lead? There are signs of hope: B Corporations, conscious businesses, and green or sustainable businesses are growing in numbers and influence around the world. I call these types of businesses, purpose brands. Plus, more and more large corporations are moving away from green washing and leading the charge on renewable energy, like, Apple, Iron Mountain, and Walmart. Companies like Coca Cola and Unilever are taking the lead on plastic reduction. All of these examples points to a new sustainable business paradigm in the making.

Some purpose brands differentiate based on the development of a unique eco-product made from all natural ingredients with minimal to no packaging.  Still further, some purpose brands turn waste into new products. Think t-shirts made of recycled bottles, or hair combs made of recycled ocean plastic, or paper made out of recycled post consumer waste and seeds so that when discarded the seeds grow into beautiful flowers or veggies to eat.

Biomimicry takes sustainable innovation a step further and asks: what if we looked at how nature designs life and see if there are operating instructions that can help us create every days things without creating waste or pollution as a bi-product in the first place?

Biomimicry, developed by scientist and scholar, Janine Benyus, points to the fact that Nature has sustained life for nearly 4 million years. How does nature do it? How has nature produced so much diversity of life and sustained life for so long?

Nature’s ingredients for life are: sun, water, and air. What if we (here’s where purpose brands come in) could power the world and create every day products with the air we breathe, sunshine, and water? Biomimicry shows us it is possible.

5 Examples of Biomimicry Inspired Designs that are Changing the Way We Make Every day Things.

1. Fireflies: LED Light Bulbs

Problem solved: Clean our air + end fossil fuel addiction through efficiency
Nature’s Solution: Microstructures that enhance light
Market Readiness: Lab/development

Fireflies help make LED light bulbs more efficient. The bugs’ lanterns have microstructures, or asymmetrical microscopic projections, that release light. 

Researchers from Penn State found that adding microstructures to the surface of LEDs, which typically have symmetrical projections, allows more light to escape, making them more efficient and improving light extraction by 90 percent.

2. SpiderWeb: Bird Detected Glass

Innovation: UV Protective Coating on glass
Problem solved: Loss of bird life
Nature’s Solution: Ultraviolet (UV) spider silk
Market Readiness: Being Manufactured

Spider webs are practically everywhere in nature where birds exist. But scientists noticed webs go unharmed from birds in flight, while many windows (unfortunately) do not. So scientists from the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute looked to Orb weaver spiders’ webs, which build their webs with ultraviolet (UV) silk.

They found that it has reflective properties that protect the web. This led to the invention of the ORNILUX® Bird Protection Glass, which has a UV-reflective coating that mimics the ultraviolet thread patterns found in Orb spider webs.

3. Humpback Whale Fins: Wind Power

Innovation: Bumps on wind turbines increases efficiency
Problem solved: Clean our air + end fossil fuel addiction
Nature’s Solution: Tubercles (bumps) on whale fins

Humpback whales are one of the largest animals on Earth, and yet they move with speed thanks to momentum from their well-designed flippers. Humpback fins have been studied and modeled for wind turbines because of their tubercles (bumps found on their fins), which help with aerodynamic improvements.

A company called WhalePower found that the tubercles leave an 8 percent improvement in lift, a 32 percent reduction in drag, and allow for a 40 percent increase in angle of attack over smooth flippers. They’re using this to design wind turbines with increased efficiency, which also has the potential to improve the safety and efficiency of airplanes, fans, and more.

4. Common Leaf: Hydrogen Energy

Innovation: Artificial Photosynthesis: A bionic leaf that creates hydrogen fuel from sunlight
Problem solved: Clean our air + end fossil fuel addiction
Nature’s Solution: Leaves + Photosynthesis
Market Readiness: Lab/development

By emulating its process of photosynthesis (a leaf’s way of converting sunshine, carbon dioxide, and water → oxygen and energy) we can generate our own clean, hydrogen fuel, just by splitting water using electricity from the sun. This renewable energy technology has zero emissions and clean water as a byproduct.

5. Mussels: Adhesives

Innovation: Non-toxic glue
Problem solved: Clean our air + non-toxic to people and animals
Nature’s Solution: Nature’s chemistry that adheres to things when wet
Market Readiness: Lab/development

These underwater mollusks have inspired scientists to make one of the strongest adhesives on the market. Researchers have cracked how mussels attach to wet surfaces, and have replicated it into an adhesive for commercial use. They designed a biomimetic polymer model that contains proteins with the amino acid DOPA, which provides the glue’s adhesion.

In a study published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, scientists found that this natural, non-toxic glue performed 10 times better than other commercial adhesives when used to bond polished aluminum.

There are many more examples of nature inspired sustainable designs that are changing how we make everyday things. Every single one gives me hope. We are optimists, remember? Life is always in search of life. No matter how big our egos grow, the planet will evolve either with us or without us.

Join me in infiltrating our local town halls, rural economic summits, and business and design schools across the country with the news about sustainable innovation tools like Biomimicry. Let’s inspire locally the “100th Monkey” of sustainable design thinking and move our world quickly (time is running out!) toward Malcolm Gladwell’s “tipping point” such that design and business are created from natures operating principles and life can flourish for 4 more million years.

May it be so.

By Claire Attkisson (sustainability/marketing geek).

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