What our economy can learn from nature... 'The blue economy' by Gunter Pauli

When and how did humanity go wrong in our way to conceive things? We only had to look around us to see how things are conceived in an efficient, effective  -sustainable- way… Welcome to the amazing world of biomimicry…

There are a tremendous amount of ways we can learn from nature to (re)use our garbage for other means, to generate energy, or to make buildings ready to face nature’s biggest calamities. ‘The blue economy’ provides a hundred of these examples, and he’s still collecting more.

Just an example: from the coffee bean plant we use approximately 0,5% to produce what we know as coffee.  The remaining 99,5% is burned or laid to waste, producing nothing but toxic gasses either way. How can we do better? It just proves to be that the remains of the plant are extremely fertile ground to grow exotic, yet very nutritious mushrooms – currently grown mostly in China, though using coffee plant waste it could grown in other parts of the world as well. This would require very few changes from the coffee farmers, and as an additional positive side effect it would create additional jobs, generate additional revenue for the poor farmers and it would solve some of the food challenges in poorer regions of the world!

This example shows the power of Gunter Pauli’s central theme: through a better way to use natural processes we can both generate a more sustainable environment and generate more wealth for more people. Both, so Pauli argues, go hand in hand. However, and here comes the real clue, to realise this these initiatives would by nature be local! Gone, globalisation. Gone, profit maximisation for irresponsible multinationals!

Natural ecosystems do not evolve to become monopolies, producing ever more standardised output. Instead they tend to align the efforts of a multitude of smaller initiatives and processes, so Pauli shows.

This does not require a revolution, just a smarter way of doing things. We can heat our buildings in much the same way as termites keep their habitat at equal temperatures.  We can use specific trees to combat erosion and at the same time grow silk worms, whose silk in turn we can use to produce shaving blades (instead of using Titanium) or in cosmetics (instead of using chemicals).  We can make buildings fireproof by using lemon shrill instead of Brome. We can produce energy using temperature differences (like zebra’s do), or through algae (who in turn have the ability to clean water and get CO2 out of the atmosphere).  Examples abound.

So where did we go wrong? Pauli argues that the reason might lie in our inclination to think linearly –instead of in cycles. We are trapped in a certain logic that does not work, at least not optimally. An unreasonable, irrational paradigm. 

Another example: traditional economic thinking (very much embedded in the opinion of each one of us, consciously or not) dictates that productivity gains (and hence economic growth) can only be obtained by using less workforce by production unit. Well, better think twice. As Pauli shows, productivity gains can be realized by using more workforce! How? Just copy nature’s wisdom… After all, it’s been gathering this wisdom for trillions of years…

This book definitely challenges our traditional way(s) of thinking…

A wonderful and exciting read !

PS: continuous research on this subject can be found through Pauli's organisation Zero Emission Research and Initiatives