Biomimicry
Feb 2023
Engineers spend their time trying to optimize a product. Depending on the desired function, they have certain criteria that they measure, such as efficiency, strength, flexibility, and so on. But thinking about the entire life cycle of a product usually receives less emphasis. What are the inputs needed for the raw materials? How are these processed into different usable parts? What happens after it is no longer needed? What does the disassembly process look like? And where does everything end up?
These are some of the questions that proponents of green engineering are voicing. This is a field that advocates for more a more complete design, including the full picture and considering sustainability as a non-negotiable.
But creating without any waste seems hard. Common objections include that it’ll be less profitable, require more work and generate subpar results. However, we forget that there is an engineer that has been using these principles for thousands of years, and has not only been successful but has built entire systems with completely optimal returns and zero waste.
That engineer is nature.
Thermal resistance. Waterproofing. Resource distribution. Speed. Information processing. These are all operations that nature has developed over the generations of painstaking iteration, feedback, and further prototyping that is evolution. Looking to and learning from nature, the master engineer, is known as biomimicry, and we are already starting to see success stories of its implementation.
One of these is a coating that prevents bacteria from accumulating. The inspiration was a Galapagos Shark, which has a particular pattern of denticles (tooth-like scales), whose architecture makes bacteria unable to land, resulting in a perfectly clean surface. This coating is being used in hospitals as a replacement for harsh cleansers and anti-bacterials that build drug resistance.
In Zimbabwe, there are buildings that have increased cooling and ventilation by studying termite mounds. They use less than 10% of the energy required for a normal building of the same size.
Planes and bullet trains were initially designed by studying birds. Waterproof paint was created by looking at lily pads. Lightweight bridges and building beams use stress algorithms from trees and bones. Concrete inspired by coral reefs can sequester carbon.
In all of these cases, engineers weren’t directly using the organisms, but were using them as a blueprint to create products that were more efficient, used less resources and generated less waste. There is no waste in nature: every output of one process serves as an input for another.
A group of engineers created the website asknature.org, a comprehensive database of potential ways that natural systems can inform product design. With any type of design problem, so much can be learned from the genius of the natural world, the most efficient system to ever exist.