Biomimicry and Waste
Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 4:50PM I posted a blog reply on 2degrees about how to look at waste differently. It occcurs to me it's worth thinking about more:
Biomimicry can provide a useful lens for thinking about waste. Nature has been creating life on earth for around 3.4bn years and has done so for the whole of the time without creating any waste that is toxic or un-needed at a system level - waste from one organism is always nutrition for another.
Nature has cleverly been doing this high performance, zero waste growing using a only dozen or so atoms from the periodic table. When Homo Sapiens discovered the power of fire, we started a process of working out how to use all of the other atoms - everything in the periodic table gets used for something that we make - and it's from these non-naturally occurring root stocks that we've created much of the waste that is now an issue.
Cradle to Cradle Design is one of the most useful frameworks for detailed consideration of waste as nutrient, and is area for profitable consideration by all businesses who process materials. It has never made much sense to 'throw away' stuff that's taken a lot of energy, money and materials to make.
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