Recyling, Remanufacturing, Reuse (RRR) in Nature

Duration: 4 hours

Target Audience: Engineers, product designers, R&D managers, corporate heads

Brief:

The characteristics of manufacturing by nature are:

• Uses low-cost materials
• Life-friendly manufacturing processes
• Nature uses only energy it needs
• Nature fits form to function

 
Nature also:

• Nature runs on sunlight
• Nature rewards cooperation
• Nature banks on diversity
• Nature demands local expertise
• Nature curbs excess from within
• Nature taps the power of limits

Scientists estimate that the single-celled organism was born some 3.5 billion years ago. From that day on, nature has been using only nanotechnology to create myriad forms of life on Earth.

• Self-assembly
• Hierarchy
• Parallel processing
• Bottom-up (Vs. Human’s Top-down)
• Self-healing
• Fusing “design-design process-designed” into one.

Nature's recycling principles:

• Nature recycles everything   
  
• Waste equals food (Waste = Food)
• Nature's “Cradle-to-cradle” Vs. Humans' “Cradle-to-grave”
• Nature uses local resources
• Nature does not create monstrous hybrids (Ex: Landfills)
• There is no confusion of flows in nature
• Respects diversity
• World of two metabolisms (Technical and biological metabolism)

Outline of Lecture

In this lecture, the concept of factory of safety, and the  principle of generosity will be illustrated with various examples from nature.