TEPUI´s vision of creating ´Sustainability Partnerships with Nature´ is based on the belief that we have to work together with nature in order to address contemporary environmental problems we are facing.This is the reason that we want to promote Living Technologies, a mix of timeless biological processes and current innovations inspired by nature´s technologies, as solutions to environmental repair and restoration.
This vision is closely connected to and inspired by the principles of Biomimicry and Life Cycle
Development (LCD), innovative approaches for designing systems based on biological methods and systems
found in nature. Biomimicry is a rapidly developing discipline that finds inspiration in the startling
solutions that natural organisms have evolved over the course of the last 3.8 billion year. This
discipline studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes providing many of
the solutions that we will need during the sustainability revolution: super-efficient structures, high
strength bio-degradable composites, self-cleaning surfaces, zero waste systems, low energy ways of
creating fresh water and many others. Biomimetic systems are closed-loop life cycles, where outputs
and by-products become inputs for something else; as the Cradle to Cradle theory puts it, it's where "waste equals food".
LCD is a method of developing closed product material flows through the design of eco-effective
products. Open material flows are seen as deficits that need material, process or information flow
optimisation.
How do these three disciplines, living technologies, Biomimicry and LCD, relate?
Biomimetic systems and Living Technologies are closed-loop life cycles, where outputs and by-products
become inputs for something else, so generally it could be said that closed life-cycles are the
overall philosophy when it comes to the development of any kind of eco-effective model, product or
technology.
Not all biomimetic systems are per definition living technologies and vice versa, although their aim
is very similar: to provide solutions to environmental problems which are inspired by nature´s
technologies. Bio-utilisation, bio-assistance and biomimicry are all different ways of using
biology. Bio-utilisation is using parts of organisms as raw materials, this includes a house
made of wood, but also a cancer drug made from horseshoe crab blood. Bio-assistance is the
domestication of organisms, anything from herding sheep to using algae to make hydrogen for fuel
cells. These strategies can also be used for green design, and are sometimes used in combination. For
example, a well-known living technology, a Living Machine sewage treatment system uses
live plants and microbes (bio-assistance) which are selected and arranged to imitate a natural
ecosystem (biomimicry). Living Machines are not only more environmentally friendly than standard
methods of sewage treatment, they turn what is normally an unpleasant burden for society into a
vibrant greenhouse.
Feel inspired? Find out more:
Living Technologies,
Sex, Velcro and Biomimicry with Janine Benyus, Waste = Food