The Green Zone; Anthony Zolezzi.com

What Can I Learn From a Termite?

Imagine a termite dressed in khaki pants and wearing a polo shirt. He’s standing in front of a small group of engineers, powerpoint clicker in one of his six hands, explaining how termite mounds function, how they regulate temperatures to keep the entire termite community at or near its optimal temperature. Now, imagine a butterfly dressed in her blue business suit fluttering her immaculate wings before a group of chemists explaining how her wings stay clean and smudge-free naturally. Seem a little far-fetched? An insect as an engineer or design consultant? Read on.

Humans create problems. Our numbers grow daily. Our demands for energy and food and shelter follow suit. We create waste at an alarming rate. We create problems for ourselves and problems for our natural surroundings – the very surroundings that we depend on to survive. In turn, scientists, engineers, architects and designers spend their lives working to devise solutions to these problems. Sometimes these solutions aren’t ideal – they’re not sustainable. Sometimes they do harm and jeopardize the health and future of our planet. And sometimes they take years to devise, millions are spent, and in the end, not much happens at all.

Now, let’s suppose the answers to some of these problems – to living sustainably, to living harmoniously with the land – might be found right in our own backyards. Or up the street at the local park or forest preserve. Or swimming around in a nearby lake, or river, or ocean. Suppose that if we started looking a bit more closely at things that exist all around us, things that have evolved over time, we might find some answers to questions we’ve been working to answer for years. Like how to utilize the sun’s energy more efficiently by looking at how leaves create photosynthesis. Like how to cool and heat a building with minimal energy consumption like termites do in arid environments. Like how to treat outer surfaces so that rain water or a simple hose-down cleans them without harsh detergents.

Through a relatively new field called Biomimicry, scientists, architects, engineers and designers are consulting nature in order to solve human problems. Why? Our natural world has been evolving for almost 4 billion years. Nature has figured out what works. It has figured out how to flourish in the desert, the mountains, the forests and the plains. And if plants, insects and animal can sustain themselves in all of those environments, why shouldn’t we use them as a tool for learning? Why shouldn’t we look to sharks and whales to discover why they move so efficiently through the water and apply what we learn to boat and aircraft design? As fresh water becomes more and more of a scarce resource, why shouldn’t we look at desert creatures like the Thorny Devil to better understand how to collect water when water is scarce? Or look at how mangroves desalinate water without the use of fossil fuels?

Sound futuristic? Let’s revisit our termite in his khaki pants and his polo shirt. He’s clicking away, showing slide after slide of the inner workings of his termite mound. He shows the termites working together to keep the mound temperature regulated. If it starts getting a bit hot, the termites create vents that allow the heat out. If it gets a little cool, they close up the vents. The mound itself, utilizes the ebb and flow of the wind to bring fresh air into the mound and move stale air out.

“So what’s the big deal?” you ask. Well, there are more than 110 million households in the U.S. On average, each household spends roughly $1000 per year on heating and cooling. If we were to design homes using termite building technologies, we’d leave a lot of people with extra cash in their pockets. And even if we eliminate the individual financial savings, the benefits to eliminating heating and cooling have an enormous ripple effect. If we eliminate the need for heating and cooling, we eliminate the need for furnaces and air conditioners. We eliminate the need for service trucks driving coughing carbon monoxide into the air along with the costs per household associated with having service done. We’d also eliminate the need for furnace factories and the energy needed to build each unit. We’d eliminate the need for the steel and other natural resources that go into making the furnaces. And, we’d eliminate the need for the fuel oil, the natural gas and the electricity used to power them. The average U.S. household has a carbon footprint of 19 metric tons. When you cut out the need for heating and cooling, you reduce everyone’s footprint significantly. Still struggling with the idea? Sound a bit too idealistic? Right now, you can travel to Harare, Zimbabwe and take a tour of a functioning office complex that uses 90% less energy than the average office complex in the area. The Eastgate Centre, a shopping and office complex, has been designed and built using principles derived from the studies of termite mounds. Pretty cool. And granted, we may be a ways from implementing termite designs on a widespread basis, but steps are moving in the right direction.

Now let’s flitter over to where our butterfly explains to chemists about her self-cleaning wings. “Big deal” you might think. “Who cares if a butterfly can clean its wings.” Well, the butterflies care and we should too. The household cleaning supply market is a $5 billion a year business. The janitorial supply business is an $11 billion a year business. Sure, the financial side is significant, but what about the chemicals? Combine the sales figures of the two industries and you begin to understand just how many chemicals end up being sprayed, scrubbed and flushed on a regular basis. And where do all of those chemicals end up? In the air. In the ground. In the water. They don’t go away. They stick around. They do damage. If butterflies can avoid them, we should be able to also. Wouldn’t it be nice to wipe down your kitchen and bathroom and not worry that your child or your pet might breathe in the fumes? Or accidentally get into the cleaning supplies cabinet and poison themselves? Wouldn’t it be nice to have the outside of your car washed clean with each rain? What about your windows? Most cleaning solvents contain harsh chemicals. Just think what we’d be doing for plant and animal life if we could eliminate them. If you get a minute, check out Nanosphere or Greenshield fabric finishes. Two products designed with butterflies in mind.

In our busy lives, hustling and bustling about, pumping fuel into our cars, cranking up the air conditioner or heater when we feel a bit uncomfortable, we often forget how much our natural world has to offer. A hike in the woods or a walk along the beach can be a wonderfully relaxing way to decompress and re-energize but the next time you’re out there don’t just walk, look around. Wonder at how the trees remain stable in high winds. Wonder at how the birds float and spin and dive in the air. Wonder at the colors reflected off the wings of a butterfly. Who knows, the next car you buy may be designed with a pine tree’s help and be lighter, safer and more fuel efficient than any car ever before.

For more information on the field of biomimicry, check out: www.biomimicryinstitute.org and www.asknature.org