Nature Inspires New Products

 

 

      

 

THE ALPINE edelweiss flower may hold clues to making better sun creams, while oyster shells could give hints about storing greenhouse gases in an emerging industrial revolution that mimics nature.

"A more fascinating horizon is opening up for the green economy," Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program, said this week in giving findings of a UNEP "biomimicry" project identifying 100 new ideas from nature.

The survey shows companies are already borrowing from the natural world for products ranging from wind turbine blades that keep turning in low winds, based on the flippers of a humpback whale, to dirt-resistant surfaces inspired by the lotus plant.

"Life in 3.8 billion years has created an enormous number of blueprints, designs, chemical recipes and technologies," said Janine Benyus of the Biomimicry Guild, which wrote the report.

"Conserving habitats is a wellspring for the next industrial revolution," she said.

The white edelweiss flower, for instance, has woolly hairs that protect the plant's cells from harmful ultraviolet wavelengths, which are powerful in the high Alps. The hairs also shield against wind and cold. Copying the chemicals in the hairs could help design better sun creams. And the plant could also help design ways to protect packaging or plastics from ultraviolet degradation.

The way pearl oysters convert carbon dioxide into a calcium carbonate shell could be imitated to help slow global warming. Carbon dioxide occurs naturally but levels are rising sharply because of human emissions of the greenhouse gas.

Canadian group CO2 Solution has won patents, based on the mollusks' ability to build shells, to help produce cement. Cement is traditionally based on limestone, formed from the bodies of fossil marine creatures.

"Industry is now going to be looking to the oceans and jungles of the world for ideas," Benyus says.  She said firms including General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Boeing, General Mills and Nike were among those that "have been asking for biologists."

In the survey, she said that researchers had identified dozens of ways in which organisms gathered water, energy or created glues more efficiently than humans.

Steiner said that the global financial crisis might have a silver lining for such green projects. "In terms of financial crisis, that's when you see innovation emerge," he said.

People have been imitating nature for thousands of years for products--birds, for instance, inspired planes. But the experts said there were many under-exploited examples.

Benyus said the lotus plant's ability to repel water with a finely pitted surface on its leaves was now imitated in roof tiles in 300,000 buildings in Europe. Erlus AG was a main maker.

Among examples from recent decades, Steiner noted that Velcro, widely used as a fastener for clothing, was created by a scientist in Switzerland annoyed by the way plant burrs stuck to his dog's fur.

Alister Doyle
Reuters