Biosphere Rules Unplugged! Rule 1- Materials Parsimony (3)

This is the THIRD of five videos on BIOSPHERE RULE #1 -MATERIALS PARSIMONY.

If you like this, for a limited time you can download a FREE digital version of my new book:
"THE BIOSPHERE RULES - Nature's Five Circularity Secrets for Sustainable Profits"
through the Global Leadership Academy at the link below:
https://www.globalleadershipacademy.com/pl/111575

MATERIAL PARSIMONY
Biosphere Rule #1: Minimize the types of materials used in products. Focus on materials that are life-friendly and economically recyclable.

The first Biosphere Rule is Materials Parsimony and it is, quite simply, about simplification. It is minimizing the types of materials used in products. I want to be clear that I’m not talking about minimizing the amounts of materials. Minimizing the amounts of materials is a different sustainability strategy, alternatively called eco-efficiency, dematerialization or even light-weighting. In Rule 1, we're talking...

Welcome back to the BIOSPHERE RULES UNPLUGGED!

This is the SECOND of five videos on RULE #1 -MATERIALS PARSIMONY.

MATERIAL PARSIMONY
Biosphere Rule #1: Minimize the types of materials used in products. Focus on materials that are life-friendly and economically recyclable.

The first Biosphere Rule is Materials Parsimony and it is, quite simply, about simplification. It is minimizing the types of materials used in products. I want to be clear that I’m not talking about minimizing the amounts of materials. Minimizing the amounts of materials is a different sustainability strategy, alternatively called eco-efficiency, dematerialization or even light-weighting. In Rule 1, we're talking about types of materials, and we'll see why minimizing the types of materials are so important as a foundation for the biosphere rules.

GET THE AUDIO MP3 HERE!

Welcome to the BIOSPHERE RULES UNPLUGGED!

This is the first of five videos on  RULE #1 -MATERIALS PARSIMONY.

MATERIAL PARSIMONY
Biosphere Rule #1: Minimize the types of materials used in products. Focus on materials that are life-friendly and economically recyclable.

The first Biosphere Rule is Materials Parsimony and it is, quite simply, about simplification. It is minimizing the types of materials used in products. I want to be clear that I’m not talking about minimizing the amounts of materials. Minimizing the amounts of materials is a different sustainability strategy, alternatively called eco-efficiency, dematerialization or even light-weighting. In Rule 1, we're talking about types of materials, and we'll see why minimizing the types of materials are so important as a foundation for the biosphere rules.

Being on Covid-19 lock down has given me time to look through my files and I discovered this vintage presentation at Thunderbird School of Global Management that was broadcast to their campuses around the world. It's a great reminder of the potential of biomimcing the Earth's production systems for business sustainability.

This will be the first in a series of videos that I am calling "The Biosphere Rules Unplugged" that are tapping into the Global Leadership Academy vault of sustainability trainings delivered previously to executive audiences. It's a great opportunity to use Covid-19 to upskill and prepare for the coming sustainable business boom.

Enjoy and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more trainings!

PREFER AUDIO? ENJOY THE PODCAST HERE!

You can listen to the audio and download the MP3 on out podcast HERE.

The last video showed how our reliance on Geomimicry is reversing hundreds of millions of years of geological and biological activity, and dramatically increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The question now is, “What are we going to do about it?”

Keeping new carbon out of the atmosphere in the first place is always the most efficient and cheapest way to keep climate change from progressing. One way to achieve this is to turn away from geomimicry in favor of doing things the way nature does. We would take a biomimetic approach to industry instead of a geomimetic one. I explore this route in my book, "The Biosphere Rules", which lays out a set of manufacturing principles derived from nature that can eliminate the unfortunate consequences of geomimicry.

However, implementing solutions such as the Biosphere Rules today can only deal with future emissions, and we’ve already...

Listen to the audio and download the MP3 from our podcast HERE.

This video series has looked at Geomimicry — the human imitation of physical geological processes in the design and manufacture products and services — and this video will look another sustainability challenge that arises from our dependence on geomimicry: Global climate change.

From space, what you notice about the Earth are the blue-green colors — green being plant life and blue, liquid water. This is not an accident, as biology has played a powerful co-evolutionary role in creating life-sustaining conditions on the planet. By looking at the chemistry of the atmosphere, we can see the power of the biosphere to alter the air around us.

When you combine geology with biology, you have an even greater long-term impact on the atmosphere. The first 600 million years of the earth are appropriately called the Hadean period and point to a very hot environment. Volcanoes released huge amounts of carbon...

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO AND DOWNLOAD THE MP3 ON OUR PODCAST FOR FREE HERE.

The previous videos introduce Geomimicry, which is the human imitation of physical geological processes in the design and manufacture products and services. Geomimicry produces huge volumes of goods, but functions as a linear throughput economy, where products go from the cradle to the grave. Often characterized as a take-make-waste system, it is also incredibly efficient at turning natural resources into trash. It's estimated that 94 percent of raw materials coming into industrial systems become waste before the product is even finished! You might think this sounds strange until you realize a high-quality copper deposit is only a few percent copper, which means you're throwing away 90-plus percent of the extracted copper ore as waste rock. Even in the high-tech pharmaceutical industry, it can take 100 tons of raw materials to produce one ton of salable pills, which is a 99 percent waste rate.

I learned something about how we see ourselves from a close psychologist friend. We were discussing relationships and I was told that people can only have relationships with other people, which startled me because I thought I had relationships with my pet dog Fritz, the tree in my front yard and the countless other species we share with the planet—and most of our DNA. It’s actually a pretty contemporary concept to recognize relationships only with other Homosapiens . After all, founder of the Franciscan Order Saint Francis of Assisi gave his most famous sermon to a flock of birds. And many indigenous American cultures recognized brother bear and the spirits in living things. But as the ancient Greek Sophist Protagoras so clearly stated, “man is the measure of all things.” More than 2000 years later, existential relativist Luigi Pirandello restated it as: “It is so if you think so,” which essentially says humans create reality in...

 Listen to the audio and download the MP3 on our podcast HERE.

The previous video introduced geomimicry  as the imitation of physical geological processes in the design and manufacture products and services. The success of our modern industrial world is largely thanks to geomimetic processes and we are fortunate for the material comforts it has provided. But there is a major downside to geomimcry, lying in many of the pressing environmental sustainability problems we face.

At the very basic level, there is the straightforward environmental degradation that comes from geomimicry’s dependence on the extraction of natural resources, be it mining for minerals or logging for lumber. Resource extraction produces large-scale surface disruptions, so extensive that they can often be seen from space. But extracting resources is just the first step — industry then transforms the materials through geomimetic processes that rely geologic temperatures and pressures...

LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST!

Anybody immersed in the world of sustainability has probably heard of biomimicry. Biomimicry is defined as the manufacture of products inspired by nature. It's a powerful design philosophy, but behind the idea of biomimicry is a riddle.  There is an implicit recognition that our current manufacturing methods don't mimic nature. And that leaves a question, “What is behind our current approach to production?”

That’s a good question and one posed to me by a Chief Sustainability Officer in one of my executive education programs. “If we're not doing biomimicry, what are we doing?” she asked, a question that at first stumped me. I sat there scratching my chin, until I suddenly blurted out, “Geomimicry!”

At that moment I realized our entire industrial economy has been built upon geomimicry. Every time we chisel a brick, forge an iron beam, even distil a hydrocarbon, we're engaging in geomimicry.