Mimicking Nature to Defeat Climate Change
The free Cool Down B’More bus takes potentially overheated Baltimore residents to cooling centers. (Screengrab from video by Mimi Yang)
ATLANTA, Georgia, July 20, 2017 (Maximpact.com News) – Five teams of entrepreneurs from around the world have been chosen to participate in the newest cohort of the world’s only business accelerator program dedicated to bringing nature-inspired solutions to market.
These five winning solutions were selected from nearly 100 entries from 28 countries. All the teams entered the 2017 Biomimicry Global Design Challenge, answering the call to apply biomimicry, nature-inspired design, to develop solutions to reverse or adapt to climate change.
A team from Mexico City has created Thermosmart, an approach that mimics the circulatory systems of elephants and alligators to boost efficiency in the heating and cooling of high-rise commercial buildings.
Another team from Bogotá, Colombia has invented Cooltiva, a system that takes advantage of the wind and the sun to regulate temperatures inside city residences using minimal energy.
A third team from Baltimore, Maryland has created Cool Down B’More, a network that connects low-income communities to designated cool spaces via an affordable transportation system. They did it by emulating the mechanisms of blue crab and bay grass and their mutual relationship within the ecosystem of Chesapeake Bay, on the U.S. Atlantic coast.
A fourth team from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil has used winged seeds, bromeliads and forest leaf litter as the inspiration for Nucleário, a reforestation solution designed for remote and hard-to-reach areas of the Atlantic rain forest.
And a fifth team from Taipei, Taiwan looked to the ways that living organisms like baleen whales and African violet leaves collect micro particles to create Refish, a device that can be attached to vehicles to collect fine particulate matter right on the road without the need for electricity and motors to pump air as used in conventional air purifiers.
The winning teams will receive a cash prize and an invitation to enter the 2017-18 Biomimicry Accelerator, where they will spend the next year working with biomimicry and business mentors to prototype and test their designs.
The Biomimicry Accelerator experience culminates in the $100,000 Ray C. Anderson Foundation Ray of Hope Prize.
The Biomimicry Global Design Challenge is an annual competition that asks teams of students and professionals to address critical global issues with nature-inspired solutions. The challenge is hosted by the Biomimicry Institute , in partnership with the Ray C. Anderson Foundation.
The Ray C. Anderson Foundation has pledged $1.5 million over four years to support the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge, a multi-year effort to crowdsource, support, and seed promising innovations inspired by nature.
Each year, the Institute and Foundation award the $100,000 Ray of Hope Prize to the most viable prototype that embodies the radical sustainability principles of biomimicry.
The winning team will demonstrate the most viable biomimetic solution, including a functioning prototype, a tested business model, and customer validation.
The Ray of Hope Prize honors the legacy of Interface Founder and Chairman Ray Anderson, who funded the foundation upon his passing in 2011. Anderson was inspired by new approaches to centuries-old design and manufacturing techniques, and used them in his $1 billion, global carpet tile company. Anderson was known for his progressive policies on industrial ecology and sustainability.
There is also a student category in the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge that offers cash prizes.
In the student category, the first-place winner is a team from California Polytechnic State University who designed a plant-inspired system that can be applied along freeways and main streets to capture and scrub carbon.
The second-place student team, from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, created a compostable patch that generates electricity by absorbing heat, inspired by the structure of the silk moth cocoon.
The third place winner in the student category is a team with members from the National Technical University of Athens, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and the Technical University of Crete who emulated coral calcification to create a design that sequesters carbon dioxide from the sea.
“Accelerating the path from idea to prototype to marketplace is our goal,” said John Lanier, executive director of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation. “And we are excited about the potential for this new cohort to demonstrate viable and innovative solutions to our climate crisis.”
The goal is to show how biomimicry, one of “Fortune” magazine’s five business “Trends to ride in 2017,” can provide viable solutions to the current climate crisis.
Biomimicry Institute Executive Director Beth Rattner said, “This is what our Ray C. Anderson Foundation partnership makes possible, bringing these teams’ ideas from concept to functioning prototypes that are ready for field testing.”
A new round of the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge will open in October 2017, also focused on climate change solutions. This will be another opportunity for teams to join and compete for the $100,000 Ray of Hope Prize. Individuals and teams can learn more about the challenge at challenge.biomimicry.org.
Videos from each of the five winning teams are found on vimeo.com.
Featured Images: Elephant in South Africa’s Sibuya Game Reserve, 2010. In hot conditions, elephants increase blood flow to the skin, creating areas that dissipate heat. (Photo by Jon Mountjoy) Creative commons license via Flickr