Element Magazine - July 2014 Element Magazine - July 2014 | Page 11

One of Gunter Pauli’s
highlighted ‘100
innovations’ true to his
Blue Economy philosophy,
Ecovative’s founders Eben
Bayer and Gavin McIntyre
grow packaging from
mushrooms – or rather the
mycelium structure from
which mushrooms grow.
The plan is to replace the
toxic polystyrene industry
with biodegradable
alternatives.

doing the right thing could be worth millions.
One early advocate for this idea is Belgian entrepreneur
and former Ecover CEO Gunter Pauli – but he argues that
just tweaking or “greening” existing business models
won’t do the trick.
“Less bad is still bad,” he told students at the World
Student Environmental Network Global Summit 2014 in
South Africa. “Unfortunately, the
green economy, the way it worked
out, is that whatever is good for
you and good for the environment
is expensive. It’s for the rich.”
Instead, Pauli has spent the last
ten years trying to further what
he’s dubbed the blue economy
– new technology and business
models, inspired by nature, that
can create jobs while having a
Gunter Pauli
positive effect on society and the
environment.
In 2009, he collected 100 examples of this blue-skydesign thinking together as The Blue Economy, a report to
the Club of Rome (re-published a year later as a book).
The report’s guiding principles include ‘substitute
something with nothing’ (question the need for each
resource), ‘work with what is locally available’, ‘use water
as a main solvent’, ‘water, air and soil are the commons’
(shared resources) and ‘waste does not exist’ (each byproduct becomes the source for a new product).

“We have one very clear agenda,” he explained. “Use
what you have locally. Respect biodiversity. Generate value
– and the local population is the primary beneficiary.”
Some of the case studies – such as razor blades made of
silk threads – may never reach commercial reality. Other
picks, though, are going strong. Ecovative, founded in Troy,
New York in 2007 by two young college graduates, offers
a way to use fungi to replace plastic and foam shipping
packaging. The company has raised over US$14 million in
equity financing, including from US multinational 3M – and
announced plans to open packaging facilities in Europe and
Asia.
Architect William McDonough – who came up with the
cradle-to-cradle concept and certification framework –
takes a similar approach to building and product design.
“We eliminate the concept of waste. We send materials
out with a good sense of where they go next, what is next,”
he told Element in February. “If it’s
going into an electronic product, it
is going to come back to be used
in electronics, so it is designed for
disassembly and reuse.”
Some new companies are
building entire multi-million
dollar business models on what
others consider trash. TerraCycle,
sometimes called the “Google of
Garbage”, teams up with major
William McDonough
corporations to collect and convert

materials that would otherwise end up in landfill.
“Garbage in nature doesn’t exist,” TerraCycle CEO Tom
Szaky agreed, speaking to Element from the US. “It’s a
completely man-made idea.”
The energy sector is also due for re-invention – and it
doesn’t have to involve nuclear power, according to US
scientist and policy advisor Amory Lovins. In 2011, Lovins
came up with a strategy to run a 158 per cent bigger US
economy without coal, oil or
nuclear energy by 2050, again
based on principles of biomimicry,
resource efficiency and wholesystem design.
As resources become scarce and
more expensive, it may not be a
question of whether businesses
adapt but when. In their new book
Resource Revolution, Stanford
University consulting professor
Amory Lovins
Stefan Heck and San Franciscobased McKinsey director Matt
Rogers argue that businesses are facing the “biggest
business opportunity of the century.”
Those that adopt five key principles, they say – resource
substitution, optimisation, virtualisation, circularity and
waste elimination – will be more likely to flourish.
The motivation here is profit – in contrast to the social
impact prioritised by Pauli – but the outcomes may be
surprisingly well-aligned. In one example mentioned by
Heck and Rogers, ATMI, a materials-technology company,
wanted to find a better way to extract gold from electronic
waste. The answer: a water-based solution that is safe
to drink, cheaper than traditional smelting and toxic acid
baths, and makes it easier to re-use computer chips.
Biomimicry gets a nod here, too. The US Air Force has
already found it can save up to 20 per cent on fuel by
having some planes copy the flight formation of geese.
There are problems inherent with chasing new
technology as a fix for social and environment i