Nocera’s work first burst on the world in 2007 with his work in figuring out how to ape the process of photosynthesis to create cheap solar energy stored as fuel. Nocera’s research, which was published last year in Science has been called the most important single solar energy discovery of the century.

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Why Your Business Should Care About the Birds, the Bees and the Burrs

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” according to a well-known proverb.  Those words seem particularly apt in today’s world of environmental, political, and economic pratfalls.  Fortunately, Mother Nature holds many of the answers to our most basic questions regarding design and equilibrium.  Internationally-known scientist Danya Baumeister will make the argument Oct. 15 at the BuildGreen Conference in Philadelphia that many savvy researchers, designers, and manufacturers would do better to leave the lab and look instead at the 3.8 billion years of evolution everywhere around them.  Baumeister is hardly the first to view the world as an R-and-D goldmine – one that could bring us new products, designs, and services to help both our environment and economy – but she is one of today’s leading biomimicry proponents.  And if you think biomimicry is a new idea, think again.

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In a first for small residential wind, the biomimicry-inspired turbine company Helix Wind has partnered with Atoll Financial Group to offer loans for its small helix-inspired wind turbines; so as to make installation of your own 50+ year supply of free energy just as easy as financing a car. Or solar.

In recent years, solar companies have come up with various ingenious ways around the upfront cost of DIY roof power, from renting (Power Purchase Agreements) to partnering with financing arms (like Sun Run), to simply adding extra property tax payments to your current mortgage (like Berkeley First).

(Of course, most monthly payments can be calibrated to come to about the same cost as the electricity bill you will no longer owe, so there is actually no extra expense really: it’s just a swap. But seeing that upfront cost can be prohibitive, even if you know how much cheaper it is than sticking with your utility over time)

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Move over Nature…the famed strength of a spider’s web silk now has some competition. Bio-mimicry and bio-materials–both emerging new sciences that seek to utilize and/or reproduce or modify natural biological materials and properties for commercial usage–has been seeing an explosion of research and experimentation of late. Recent bio-materials experiments with spider dragline silk (taken from an Araneus spider’s silk glands) have resulted in a bio-mimicked new material that is stronger than its natural version.

To make this new material, the scientists had to “infiltrate” the inner protein structure of the spider’s dragline, silk threads with a metal ion of zinc (Zn 2+). These experiments built on earlier analyses of the mandibles of leaf-cutter ants, locusts, and marine polychaetes (a type of large sea worm) that showed a strong relationship between accumulated Zinc, Aluminum and Titanium levels in these materials and their high tensile and hardness properties.  Previous attempts to incorporate such metals synthetically had proven to be too great a technological challenge.

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The guide is available for download in pdf format, and while it is designed for kids in a learning environment, there is something in there for everyone to learn from.

It’s graciously offered by the Center for Ecoliteracy which is dedicated to education for sustainable living. Their work is based on these four guiding principles:

Nature is our teacher

Sustainable living is rooted in a deep knowledge of place

Sustainability is a community practice

The real world is the optimal learning environment

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First coined by John Elkington and articulated in his book, Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of the 21st Century, the triple bottom line doesn’t drop the idea that businesses should earn a profit. It adds that businesses should do so in ways that take into account environmental and social performance in addition to financial performance. It requires a strong and efficient organization, perhaps even more so. Not only do you need to make a profit, you need funds and resources to reach beyond where mainstream business stops. A triple bottom line means expanding the spectrum of values and criteria for measuring business success to include: the planet, people and profits.

A Planet Bottom Line

Is what is being produced or services provided better for ALL life? A Planet bottom line continually examines inputs and outputs, addressing the materials we use and how we use them as well as minimizing – if not eliminating — waste. Ecopreneurs recognize and incorporate ecological limits into their business models. Many shun the use of toxic chemicals, hazardous materials or processes, or exploitative approaches to nature. A growing number of people are adopting an approach to product development or design that involves biomimicry.

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It seems everyone is “going modular” these days with the rapid growth in the movement of green prefab design and construction. The buzz in modular construction is causing a rush of new designs, innovative products, and advanced modular systems being introduced. The goal of prefab is still the same as minimizing waste while maximizing efficiency. To learn more about prefab design and what makes it a compelling form of green building, please click here.

No longer are the days when just calling yourself a prefab company is considered environmentally progressive. Homes are now being made from materials like reused shipping containers, recycled steel, and certified sustainably-harvested wood. The new challenge for prefab companies is balancing the economics of innovative sustainable design with the realities of construction and raw material costs.

We want to highlight some companies doing some very interesting work in the prefab space.

Envision Prefab shows their commitment to the environment by attempting to maintain a zero carbon footprint in both manufacturing and production of their models. Their e-House reuses shipping containers transformed into seamless interior spaces, while including a laundry list of green systems such as tankless water heaters, solar panels, and LED lighting.

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In a recent article, Business Week noted that Janine was named Environmental Hero of 2007 by Time. Through a research nonprofit called Biomimicry Institute and a for-profit consulting firm called the Biomimicry Guild, Janine brings interdisciplinary groups of biologists, engineers, and designers together to uncover natural phenomenon that can be replicated in corporate and commercial applications.

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The efficiency development model helps servers that used to be assigned to only one task to now multitask and move between tasks as needed. In other words, the servers can now meet the fluctuating demand that the internet has more quickly. This model reduces the chance that a website gets overwhelmed with demand and locks up. It is also said to increase efficiency and service by 20 percent.

Georgia Tech professor Craig Tovey was struck with a curiosity of honeybee behavior in the early 80s. He realized through conversations with a colleague from the University of Oxford that “bees and servers had strikingly similar barriers to efficiency.” Bees have very inconsistent resources. Sometimes there is an abundance of nectar to collect and sometimes there is very little. Year after year the supply is different and the location of the nectar oasis’s change. Yet somehow, they always seem to maintain a fairly consistent supply of nectar in the hive. Tovey saw this as a stimulating intricacy in the natural environment that yielded very effective results. Tovey among other colleagues conducted research for decades on how they work and how to use their brilliance in our built environment.

The greatest breakthrough was the discovery of the waggle dance. Australian zoologist Karl con Frisch won a Nobel Prize for this. When bees that hit an oasis return to the hive, they do a dance at the hive floor, wagging their tail back and forth. Each movement of the dance indicates location, scent, sound and gives other foragers clues about where the oasis of nectar is.

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If you’ve ever seen a termite mound you should still be impressed by these built by African termites in Zimbabwe. The termites build mounds reaching multiple feet in order to farm a fungus that feeds them. The finicky fungus must live at exactly 87 degrees F. While temperatures outside the mound walls vary by about 70 degrees F, they had a problem to solve. “The termites achieve this remarkable feat by constantly opening and closing a series of heating and cooling vents throughout the mound over the course of the day. With a system of carefully adjusted convection currents, air is sucked in at the lower part of the mound, down into enclosures with muddy walls, and up through a channel to the peak of the termite mound. The industrious termites constantly dig new vents and plug up old ones in order to regulate the temperature,” describes Abigail of Inhabitat.

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Initially planned to address the eminent issues of the decade, the original Be-In has evolved into an art/music/digital cyberculture exploration that now focuses on the latest in the GREEN movement. The 2007 theme of Biomimicry is designed to be “a launching pad for sustainability initiatives that matter.”

Happening “on Earth Day Weekend in San Francisco,” the program will include a Biomimicry Symposium, a Green Techné Exhibition, Live Performances, and DJs with Interactive Installations. All of this will be centered around the theme of Biomimicry, defined by the Biomimicry Institute as:

From bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate, a new science that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems.

An example of this happens when an eco paint-designer wanting to make water-repellent paint studies a lotus flower to copy its water-repelling qualities.

Sponsored by Cyberset Music and Media with Green Century Institute and Urban Alliance for Sustainability, this year’s Digital Be-In will be held at the Mezzanine in San Francisco on April 21st. Events start at 7 and music starts at 9. For more information, see http://www.be-in.com/

While biomimicry is helpful in identifying life-friendly materials and processes that enhance (rather than pollute) the bio-sphere, it also embraces a principle that capitalists everywhere can salute: performance.  “In nature, if a design strategy is not effective, its carrier dies,” according to the Guild.  In other words, “failures are fossils.”  From saving money on energy use to cutting down on materials used in products and processes, these earth-first biologists make the point that nature is the original inventor, investor, and lean manufacturer.

The emphasis on sustainable design and manufacturing of new products makes Baumeister’s appearance at the BuildGreen Conference, hosted by the Delaware Valley Green Building Council, a natural fit.  The conference will bring together a broad variety of stakeholders, including university materials researchers, investors, green building designers, and policy makers interested in applying sustainable design and local green product manufacturing to boost the region’s economy.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, and Philadelphia Sustainability Director Katherine Gajewski will all be in attendance at the conference, along with a host of other experts and thought leaders interested in linking the region’s sustainability efforts to long-term economic success.  Innovative research from local universities will also be on display to drive home the point that we’ve already got the right recipe for success: a host of highly-productive institutions of higher learning, a manufacturing base in need of retooling, and political will.  The conference organizers are also arguing that our own particular necessity, the need for more high-quality green jobs in the region, should be front and center as we reinvent ourselves as a powerhouse of sustainable activity and investment.

Necessity is one heck of a mother, but Leonardo may have said it even better: “Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, a mistress above all masters, are laboring in vain.”

Photo Credit: hart_curt via Flickr under Creative Commons License