Fundamentals of Sustainable Business. Matthew Tueth

requires us to use an extraordinary approach.

      At this point, let’s reconsider a key component of the Judeo-Christian ethic that is prevalent throughout the Western society. Many Americans and Europeans believe that the proper environmental role of man is as a wise steward for all biota and regions of the natural world. Our superior intelligence and natural dominance, so the familiar ethic implies, place us in this position of control to skillfully supervise all planetary wildlands and waters. Among other things, this ethic elevates humans above all other species and positions other life forms as part of a provisioning support structure for humanity. The idea of man as a superior and benevolent species wisely managing God’s creation in respectful ways has indeed been embedded and reinforced in the Western society. The message in the Book of Genesis from the Old Testament seems quite clear: God created the world in six days for humans and rested on the seventh day.

      Not surprisingly, Western environmentalists have adopted this theme of natural world stewardship as a basic tenet. This position offers an opportunity, perhaps even suggests a duty, for humans to take charge and decide the strategy to remedy the substantial global environmental degradation. This stewardship role has engaged many people, particularly in the past 100 years, in what is thought of as enlightened management of the natural world and no doubt involves many well-intentioned participants today. I suspect numerous readers of this book may subscribe to this belief.

      Let’s now review the context of our situation and consider the application of emulating nature’s genius in the sustainable business movement.

2.2Naturally Our Best Foot Forward

      Man’s legacy of environmental and social troubles across the globe stemming from past technological choices has been well documented. Our predilection for fossil fuels, landfill-bound materials, natural resource exploitation, soil degradation, and persistent toxic waste is among the deepest failures. Considering our past performance, the expectation of our own cleverness to remedy our systemic industrial problems may not be in our best interests. Relying on our wit and ingenuity alone has produced baleful long-term results in the last few centuries, so expectations for a markedly different outcome of the present-day industrial and social reforms from a similar approach are simply not judicious.

      A refreshingly ingenious alternative methodology has been suggested and popularized by the biologist Janine Benyus in her groundbreaking 1997 book, Biomimicry — Innovation Inspired by Nature. Benyus and other biomimics propose the idea that people emulate the genius of the natural world when growing food, harnessing energy, constructing things, conducting business, healing ourselves, processing information, and designing communities. Benyus believes it is in our best interest to “quiet our cleverness” and explore the dominant industry on the planet — nature’s industry — for reliable methods of provisioning for our species. Benyus points out that the natural world has over 3.5 billion years of successful design experience in building durable and diverse life-supporting communities in a wide variety of environmental conditions. She notes that all other life forms on Earth take a very different approach to energy, food, and material production and consumption and to community than humans. She reminds us that past species out of step with natural world process are now present only as cryptic fossils.

      For most species, adapting to changing environmental conditions is accomplished by the occasional and random genetic changes in the cellular information of an organism. The acquisition of both genetically enabled physiological changes or genetically driven instinctive behavior can, in rare occasions, benefit subsequent generations of the organism. Humankind, on the other hand, has relied more heavily upon reflective behavioral adaptations during most of our tenure to improve the chances of survival. The development of farming is an example of an enormously significant behavioral adaptation of man. Agriculture emerged within human culture approximately 10,000 years ago and for the first time provided the means for groups of humans to acquire more food than was needed in the short term. Over time, increasingly dependable agricultural food surpluses provided the requisite accumulation of wealth that would enable distinctly different occupations to appear within groups of humans and that made available the free time necessary to develop a variety of other cultural components such as religion, written language, mathematics, political systems, engineering, and trade relationships with other people. Other examples of significant human behavioral adaptations include health care, manufacturing, and building design.

      In the long term, however, our intellectual ability to organize complex social processes is ironically contributing to our undoing. Our legacy of technological change has established systems for living that produce quite different results from those systems used by all other biota. Historically, we have viewed our technology as a positive divergence from all other life and as an example of our species’ unique superiority. A close examination of the insidious effects of this prolonged strategy reveals a corresponding steady decline of natural processes and services upon which all life, including man, depend. Fortunately, independent thinkers such as Benyus and others have recognized the critical opportunity to borrow from nature’s wisdom and remodel our industry after the most thoroughly tested life-supporting processes in existence. The genius of the natural world has always been present for us to glean, and finally, some of our contemporary designers have begun to take notice. Here are just a few examples of how designers have used nature to inspire our current products:

      •Cockleburs and the fabric fastener VELCRO^®.

      •Abalone mother-of-pearl and high-tech ceramics.

      •Spider silk and stronger-than-steel cord.

      •Mussel shell adhesive and in-the-water ship hull repair.

      •Fish-shaped and decreased-drag coefficient vehicle design.

      •Toe-pads of geckos and strong, dry, and clean adhesives.

      •Porcupine quills/bird bones and structural support improvements.

      Benyus also identifies large perspective applications of the genius of nature for a sustainable world. She suggests we model our cities after Type III ecosystems such as a redwood forest. Type III ecosystems typically reward diversity and interdependencies, build natural capital, procure locally, cycle all materials, and use the sun as their sole energy source.⁶ Evidence suggests that these durable Type III natural communities have existed for many millions of years and provide an appropriate touchstone for the redesign of human communities around the world. The next few sections include even more nature-inspired systemic opportunities for sustainable business.

2.3Pernicious Material Processes

      Consider that nearly all your possessions will end up in a landfill, a solid waste incinerator, or a junk yard. Some items will reach the end of the line in only a month; others will take years. Clothes, furniture, appliances, vehicles, plastics, cardboard, and construction materials are part of our linear production systems (materials are extracted, processed, sold, used, and discarded). To make matters worse, our material preparation and refinement processes often yield substances that are used only once, are not designed for reprocessing, and have persistent toxins mixed with benign natural materials. Persistent toxins are long lasting, man-made, and not readily decomposed by natural processes. Unfortunately, many of these toxins eventually enter the human body through a variety of pathways, such as by air, water, and food, and disrupt various body systems, cause cancer, and contribute to numerous other serious health problems.

      Interior carpeting is an example of a commonly used product that is made of multiple persistent toxins. These contaminants fill the air inside our buildings via the wear and abrasion dust from foot traffic or from harmful vaporizing materials. Common nylon carpet pile material often contains polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), a brominated fire retardant that damages the thyroid gland, the lymph system, and the nervous system. Benzene and p-dichlorobenzene are known carcinogens contained in some carpeting pile. Carpet padding is commonly made of polyvinyl chloride and polyurethane, two other seriously toxic petrochemicals. Carpet adhesives, such as 4-phenylcyclohexene (4-PC), styrene, ethyl benzene, and toluene, add even more to the harmful mix routinely found in carpeted interiors. These persistent toxins tend to be most densely present in the air closest