Lovely example of biomimicry from Ecovative via Grist:
Usually you do not want fungi in the walls of your home. But Ecovative is building a home in which having fungi in the walls is the entire point. The “Mushroom Tiny House” will use mycelium (the mass of threadlike “roots” that mushrooms use to take in nutrition) for insulation.
According to Inhabitat, this stuff is basically asbestos except that it’s not bad for the planet, won’t give you cancer, and is related to something you might put on a pizza…
In 2001, Jim Collins published his research into the factors that turned good businesses into great businesses, performing well above their industry average over long periods of time. The title of the book is “Good to Great. Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t”.
(Originally posted June 2013. Most recently updated Nov 2020) I read a recent blog post which made the claim that “In the past 25 years, only lip-service has been paid to SD, particularly around the use of fossil fuels.” I don’t agree – I believe that we’re much further down the track than most people know….
Wandering the web the other day, it occurred to me that the continuous improvement process “5 whys” could be a powerful tool for sustainability. I was watching a LinkedIn conversation on the challenges of consumption, and there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of depth to the conversation.
Michael Gerber first published his business classic “The eMyth” in 1986, and it’s been a business book bestseller for decades, revised as “The eMyth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It“ in 1995. (NOTE: The “e” is nothing to do with the Internet – it stands for “entrepreneur”.) Its insights…
Some of you may have noticed a long gap since our last publication (in fact, it’s a gap of 12 months). This has been due to my father’s losing battle with cancer. He died at the end of February, and now life has become more predictable, if sadder and a bit emptier than before. During this time, and particularly…
Back in the 19th century the human race got hooked into chemical and mechanical engineering. We developed steam power and learned to make soap in quantity, then later fell in love with petrochemicals. While these have been useful tools to a point, their side effects are showing up as increasingly damaging. Biomimcry is showing up…
