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129
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2006 ECOS 27
Janine Benyus believes that by treating
nature as ‘model, measure and mentor’,
Australian companies, governments and
universities are in a strong position to take
advantage of the leading edge opportuni-
ties provided by the emerging field of what
she has coined ‘biomimicry’.
The idea is that, during its 3.8 billion
years of research and development, nature
has evolved highly efficient systems and
processes that can inform solutions to
many of the waste, resource efficiency and
management problems that we now
grapple with today.
Biomimicry has already provided some
timely, standout innovations in areas such
energy engineering, and waste reuse, where
multiple-scale efficiency improvements are
greatly needed. ‘Over the millions of years,
nature’s life forms through natural selec-
tion have had to live with the constraints of
the entropy law on a solar budget,’ reflects
Wes Jackson, noted author and President
of The Land Institute, Kansas, US,a body
that promotes natural agricultural systems.
Biomimicry’s application is predicted
across many sectors as the great potential
for improved performance is realised.
Benyus’s book1sets out that there are
nine basic laws underpinning the concept
of biomimicry:
1. Nature runs on sunlight
2. Nature uses only the energy it needs
3. Nature fits form to function
4. Nature recycles everything
5. Nature rewards cooperation
6. Nature banks on diversity
7. Nature demands local expertise
8. Nature curbs excesses from within
9. Nature taps the power of limits.
As a biologist, the question for Benyus is
not whether our technology is natural, but
how well adapted it is to life on Earth over
the long term. She says that engineers,
scientists, architects and designers are often
humbled, and then excited,when they
discover how nature already has solutions
to their challenges, and how it generally
outperforms their traditional solutions,
showing them creative alternatives.‘Nature
knows what works, what is appropriate,
and what lasts here on Earth.’
As co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild,
Benyus has assisted the engineering, archi-
tectural and scientific professions as well as
major international corporations, such as
carpet company Interface,global architects
HOK, Proctor & Gamble and Nike, to learn
from nature’s designs how to develop truly
sustainable solutions.
Bill Valentine, HOK’s President said
working with Benyus had been a pivotal
event for his organisation.‘We were
immersed in a sea of information, strategies,
science and insight and left with a strong
commitment for a far wider discovery and
education of these ideas across the firm.’
In order to meet the needs of businesses
striving for sustainability, the team from
the Biomimicry Guild focus on cultivating
the transfer and application of biological
knowledge to the business community,
evolving the best model for integrating this
knowledge with business, and creating
strategies for monitoring successful
The 2002 book,Biomimicry, describes a new science
that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates
these designs and processes to provide innovative
and sustainable solutions for industry and research
development.Author and international expert,
Janine Benyus,is now focusing on working with
industry and governments across the globe to
implement her ideas.She will be touring Australia
with the team from The Natural Edge Project in May.
Innovation inspired by nature
Biomimicry
1 Benyus JM (2002). Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.
Perennial, New York.
Peter Nguyen
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2006
progress. An educator at heart, she believes
that the better people understand the
genius of the natural world, the more they
will want to protect it.
Many biomimicry success stories exist
across a number of technological fronts
where they are providing new and sustain-
able solutions. Examples of these are the
invention of Velcro fastening from study-
ing cockleburs, the design of the Japanese
Shinkansen bullet train nosecone, based on
the beak of a kingfisher bird, the ventilated
design of Harare’s Eastgate Complex and
the design of gecko tape which mimics the
surface of gecko lizards’ feet (see box).
According to Jonathon Porritt, of the
UK sustainability charity, Forum for the
Future, Biomimicry is ‘one of those rare
hopeful notes in the modern chorus of
environmental warnings. Benyus offers a
radical alternative to today’s industrial
model of progress – an elegant survival
strategy drawn from a better understand-
ing of those natural systems on which we
are still totally dependent. Perhaps the best
thing about this quest for innovation
inspired by nature is that it is more than
just a theory. It is already underway.’
•Karlson ‘Charlie’ Hargroves and Michael
H Smith, The Natural Edge Project.
Janine Benyus will be delivering the Keynote
at the joint dinner for the Australian
Business Leaders Forum for Sustainable
Development and the Queensland EPA
Sustainable Industries Award in Melbourne
on 15 May and will then set off on a two-
week tour of the country engaging with
various companies, government agencies,
organisations and institutions in partnership
with The Natural Edge Project. For enquires
about Janine Benyus’ tour and engagements
visit www.naturaledgeproject.net/
BenyusTour06.aspx.
Progress
INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY
Passive cooling in buildings
The Eastgate Complex,located in Harare,
Zimbabwe,is a 324 000 square-foot
commercial office and shopping complex
which includes two nine-storey office build-
ings and a glazed atrium. In Zimbabwe’s
extremely hot climate, the building’s primary
cooling method is natural ventilation.
Engineers from firm Arup,led by Mick
Pearce,sought inspiration for the ventilation
design from termite mounds since termites
require their home to remain at an exact
temperature of 87°F (30.5°C) throughout a
24-hour daily temperature range of between
35°F at night and 104°F during the day (1.6°C
to 40°C).1The solution was a passive-cooling
structure with specially designed hooded
windows, variable thickness walls and light
coloured paints to reduce heat absorption.
Velcro
In the 1940s, Swiss inventor George de
Mestral found that, upon returning home for
a walk with his dog one day,his pants and
the canine’s fur were covered with cockle-
burs. He studied the burs under a micro-
scope, observing their natural hook-like
shape, which ultimately led to the design of
the popular adhesive material,Velcro.Velcro
is a two-sided fastener – one side with stiff
‘hooks’like the burrs and the other side with
the soft ‘loops’like the fabric of his pants. The
result was VELCRO® brand hook and loop
fasteners, named for the French words
‘velour’ and ‘crochet’.2
Self-cleaning paints
Germany company,Sto AG, have developed
a biomimicry inspired exterior coating with a
water-repellant surface based on that of the
lotus leaf.Professor Wilhem Barthlott, from
the University of Bonn in Germany,devel-
oped the surface after looking for environ-
mentally benign alternatives to toxic
cleaning detergents in order to reduce envi-
ronmental impacts. He asked the question
‘How does nature clean surfaces?’ It became
obvious that nature doesn’t use detergents
at all – instead it designs self-cleaning
surfaces with hydrophobic properties.3
Biomimicry applied
1 Summary of learning points taken from Rocky Mountain Institute’s Green Developments 2.0 CD-Rom (companion to Wilson A, Seal JL,
McManigal LA, Lovins LH,Cureton M and Browning WD (1998). Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate. John Wiley &
Sons, New York). Case study also available from Hargroves K and Smith MH (2005). Chapter 18: Greening the built environment.In The
Natural Advantage of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovation and Governance in the 21st Century. pp. 368–370. Earthscan, London.
2 Velcro Industries, N.V. www.velcro.com.
‘Janine Benyus is without
question the world’s most
imaginative person in the field
of environmental development
and restoration.Time spent with
Janine is a transmission of hope
about what we can learn from
and be within nature.’
Paul Hawken,Natural Capital Institute
A scanning electron microscope image of
Velcro’s hooks and loops (370 micron view).
Phillips Exeter Academy
Termite mounds are marvellously
engineered for internal temperature
consistency. Janine Bolliger
The hydrophobic surface structure of the
lotus leaf became the inspiration for a new
kind of self-cleaning paint. Feng Yu
ECOS 129.qxd 9/3/06 1:14 PM Page 28
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Transport aerodynamics
The 500-Series Shinkansen Japanese bullet
train running between Tokyo and Hakata is
one of the fastest trains in the world.The
challenge for the design of the Shinkansen
was to make it run quietly at high speed.
Learning that the owl family is the most
silent and stealthy fliers of all birds,the
Shinkansen design team discovered the
bird’s secret in its wing plumage design –
many small saw-toothed feathers protrude
from the outer rim of their primary feathers.
Other birds do not have these feathers.These
saw-toothed wave feathers are called ‘serra-
tion feathers’and they generate small
vortexes in the airflow that then break up the
larger vortexes that produce noise.It took
four years of strenuous effort by the younger
engineers on the team to practically apply
this principle. Finally,‘serrations’were
inscribed on main part of the pantograph
(the collectors that receive electricity from the
overhead wires),and this succeeded in reduc-
ing noise enough to meet the world’s strictest
standards.This technology is now called a
‘vortex generator’,and it has already been
applied to aircraft and is now being applied
to the caps and boots of professional skaters.
Another problem to be overcome was the
low-level sonic booms occurring from tunnel
exiting. Again,looking to nature for a solution
to the sudden changes in air resistance,the
design team discovered that the kingfisher
bird’s specially designed beak enables it to
dive from air to water (low- to high-resist-
ance mediums respectively) with minimal
energy loss. Computer modeling techniques
used to determine what style of nose for the
Shinkansen revealed the kingfisher beak to
be the most ideal shape.1Note that the lights
on the front of the train mimic the nostrils of
the bird.
Gecko tape
Scientists at the University of Manchester
have developed a new type of adhesive,
which mimics the mechanism employed by
the gecko lizard to walk on surfaces, includ-
ing glass ceilings.The new adhesive (‘gecko
tape’) contains billions of tiny plastic fibres,
less than a micrometer in diameter,which are
similar to natural hairs covering the soles of
gecko’s feet which generate elecrodynamic
adhesion at a microscopic level.2,3 One
square centimetre of gecko tape could
support a weight of one kilogram. In addition
to a general adhesive,it can be used to move
computer chips in a vacuum and pick up
small fibres.The tape can be used several
times over and does not use toxic chemicals
found in common adhesives.4
1 Japan For Sustainability,Biomimicr y, Series No 6,‘Shinkansen technology learned from an owl? – The story of Eiji Nakatsu’
(hwww.japanfs.org/en/newsletter/200503.html#3).
2 Article sourced from the University of Manchester News Centre,Spiderman becomes a reality at the University of Manchester.
3 Technical paper on gecko tape: Geim AK et al (2003). Microfabricated adhesive mimicking gecko foot hair.
www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3785
4ibid.
The design features of Japan’s Shinkansen 500-Series exemplifies biomimicry in action.Its overhead pantograph sports serrations
were modeled on the design of owl plumage to reduce air resistance noise,and the air piercing nose cone design was inspired by the
kingfisher’s beak. From the Swiss–Japan Assoc. for Engineers and Scientists.
A scanning electron micrograph of micro-
fabricated polyimide hairs like those
employed on gecko tape.Scale bar is 2 µm.
Courtesty AM Geim.
Geckos’ feet pads have given up their secret
.
Chartchai Meesangnin
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