How can design be "inspired by nature" without greenwashing?
While biomimicry is a step in the right direction, do we misunderstand what parts of nature we’re supposed to mimic?
It’s well-known within the sustainable design community that phrases like “earth-friendly,” “inspired by nature,” or “for the planet” are greenwashing. Through their vagueness, they help companies avoid any real accountability. But is there no way for these things to be true? Surely, there are products and services that actually are inspired by nature, right?
If you search for ‘biomimicry,’ you’ll likely come up with one-to-one tech solutions—emulating sharkskin to swim faster, mimicking burrs to create fasteners, or imitating the shape of humpback whale fins to increase wind turbine efficiency. While these are technically nature-inspired and undoubtedly useful, they also offer a bland vision of what biomimetic technology and design could be.
That vision fits a little too nicely into the modern idea of progress and innovation, which is almost exclusively focused on material and economic growth and generally ignores any growth in emotional, personal, or communal well-being. It lacks the experimentation that would come with truly reframing our relationship with nature. The fact that biomimicry means aping plants’ and animals’ bodies but not their actions shows a superficial understanding of what makes nature nature.
In a way, these solutions are also greenwashing. This uni-directional, status quo vision continues the tradition of imagining what humanity can take from nature without contemplating what to give back; it’s the same dualist mindset we’ve used for centuries. In that way, the future isn’t so much a re-visioning of what could be, as it is a rerun of what already is.
Biomimicry shouldn’t necessarily be about creating organic or living forms but replicating the fundamental principles of dialogue and sufficiency that drive nature and learning how to apply them to our design process.
‘Forward’ is backward
Contrary to popular belief, oases are not natural paradises but highly productive, cultivated land. The misconception of oases as leisure spots comes from the influence of French colonists. A native culture exploited and oppressed was the dark side of that leisure.
Those colonists changed the literal structure and purpose of oases in Tunisia, shifting them from productive, tightly packed gardens with diverse plant life to sparse, monocultural plantations so crops were more accessible to harvest and return to the imperial core. Over decades, this had ecological impacts, like the loss of the three layers of vegetation that create the “oasis effect,” and social ones, such as the growing unpopularity of community-managed land. Privatization and competition took over, sapping the land of its abundance and the people of their solidarity.
So what is the real purpose of oases, if not a goldmine of produce or a resort to relax?
They’re a collaboration with nature. But I would also say they’re an excellent example of how to think about biomimicry and exercise those principles of dialogue and sufficiency.
While underground aquifers often feed oases, their cultivation also keeps those aquifers fed. This phenomenon is similar to the water cycle we see in nature: the humidity from plants in the Amazon creates rainfall, encouraging more plant growth, which creates more humidity and rainfall. A similar dialogue happens in oases. Each layer in the three-layer system supports one another to increase moisture and transpiration: Palm trees shade fruit trees, which then shade smaller vegetable bushes, whose transpiration—plants’ version of perspiration—returns moisture to the higher levels of vegetation.
Historically, people across Northern Africa have used the water from oases to create ‘acequias’ that feed their farmland. These canals of slow-moving water carry vital hydration from oases to neighbors’ plots and, because of their porous walls, support the growth of wild vegetables and vegetation along the way. This secondary effect causes the ground to become hydrophilic instead of hydrophobic, accepting water rather than rejecting it and creating the conditions for more water to fill the aquifers. Water is actually ‘created’ by slowing it down. Again, we see a dialogue between humanity and the rest of nature.
I say all of this because design also creates oases. However, right now, we do so with a colonial mentality, setting our sights on frictionlessness (relaxation, extraction, monetization) rather than resilience (cultivation, community, sufficiency). And as the underground aquifers of literal oases dry up due to mismanagement, at times, it feels like our aquifer of ideas has started to run dry.
‘Backward’ is forward
So, how can acequias and oases, in their pre-colonial meaning, influence design?
Slow information
At one moment or another, we’ve all been hypnotized by social media, scrolling infinitely without knowing exactly where to. This happens when we ingest too much information too fast; we check out while our brain is hot-wired and taken for a joy ride. With a trip to the mountains or seaside, the opposite happens: we come back recharged specifically because of the reduced pace and volume of information we take in.
This reminds me of something L. M. Sacasas wrote recently in his newsletter. Quoting philosopher Albert Borgmann, he made the distinction between devices and things:
Something is technologically available, Borgmann explains, “if it has been rendered instantaneous, ubiquitous, safe, and easy.” At the heart of [modern devices] is the promise of increasing availability.
Borgmann goes on to distinguish between things and devices. While devices tend toward technological availability, what things provide tend not to be instantaneous, ubiquitous, safe, or easy. The difference between a thing and a device is a function of the sort of engagement that is required of user.
So, devices’ immediacy, ubiquity, and frictionlessness make falling into a social media trance much more likely. “Things”—instruments, sewing machines, cameras—feel so calm, at least partly, because they don’t have those qualities; they make us think and often have a singular purpose, such as music making or capturing a moment.
While there are times when ease and speed are good, these are now goals of every part of society, from dating to exercise, fashion to design. I would argue that many of these activities would benefit from a slower pace and that we don’t gain much from going faster. For instance, using AI to write an essay or email response doesn’t make you a better communicator; it outsources the process and makes a beeline toward the accomplishment. It ignores that the goal is to write, not to have written.
Slowing the in- and out-flow of information makes us more receptive in the same way that slowing water makes the ground more permeable. It gives us space to be “dreamy,” as David Lynch says. Or to create an animation masterpiece. How much do the devices and interfaces we design and use keep us from feeling anything other than speed? And how much does this speed keep us from feeling anything other than the drip of dopamine?
Resilience
The idea of three vegetation layers also fits nicely into the regenerative design idea of Three Horizons. This framework helps us understand the possible futures of an industry or society and the transitory period that bridges the gap between the old and new paradigms.
By exploring potential futures, we can understand what causes “business as usual,” what kind of future we want to build, and what disruptive actions push us there or drag us back to the status quo. Like pre-colonial oases, having in mind this global vision of the future gives us respite from The Future™, avoids the brittleness of monoculturalism, and creates the resilience of diversity.
But the future never stops coming, so we must build ongoing climate processes—not climate goals that we inevitably overshoot. We need to develop resilience that’s both durable and ephemeral, depending on the situation or environment’s needs. More than anything, it’s essential to be relevant: Does usage need to create beautiful wear, as in the case of a well-built wooden chair, or should a cup start disintegrating just hours after coming into contact with liquid?
With plastic, we’ve managed to paint ourselves into a corner of material durability and usage ephemerality (i.e., disposability). Often, it should be the other way around, with materials being ephemeral and usage being durable. We know this is possible because this was the norm from the beginning of humanity—conservatively, 300,000 years ago—until 1907, the year that plastic was invented.
Returning to the well
These lessons give us clues for how to “return to the well” of biomimicry; rather than a short-term execution, it becomes a long-term strategy that is integrated early in the process before any visual, industrial, or product design starts. Maybe a better way to say that is that it becomes the process; it should be a mindset, not the greenwashed marketing scheme that ‘sustainability’ has sadly morphed into.
The rest of nature produces things for others. It’s rare that one species’ waste or activities can’t be used for the benefit of another. In the indigenous history of humanity, we’ve often acted as caretakers of nature, with it becoming more abundant thanks to us. As I’ve mentioned, this role has largely been surrendered (and exterminated) over the past centuries. But I think bio-mimicry—the thought process, not the visual cliché—is one piece of the puzzle that could help us return to stewardship.
This way of thinking could remind us that humanity is defined by its relationships in the same way that nature is. Though we see ourselves as separate, above, and more evolved, we can’t deny our relationality with the rest of nature. Although Modern Man doesn’t want to be human, we can’t deny reality.
To acknowledge our inherent relationship with nature and the collaborative work needed to balance the system that is Earth, we must see the value in dialogue and sufficiency. Doing the opposite—giving sermons about growth and excess—often comes at the expense of people or places. It heavily dehumanizes our basic needs to tack on just 2-3% more GDP every year.
Like the biology it mimics, a bio-mimetic economy should deliver ‘nutrients’ across its entire body. Instead of the leggy, spindly growth we now see, we need to imagine and create an economy that grows dense and bushily. I don’t have all the answers to how we get there, but I wanted to leave you with a question:
How can design create thriving instead of growth? What do you think?