Natural Capitalism
1999 -- By Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins
Materials efficiency is just as much a lesson of biological design as the making of spider-silk: biomimicry can inform not just the design of specific manufacturing processes but also the structure and function of the entire economy. As [Janine] Benyus notes, an ecologically redesigned economy will work less like an aggressive, early-colonizer sort of ecosystem and more like a mature one. Instead of a high-throughput, relatively wasteful and undiversified ecosystem, it will resemble what ecologists call a Type Three ecosystem, like a stable oak-hickory forest. Its economy sustains a high stock of diverse forms of biological wealth while consuming relatively little input. Instead, its myriad niches are all filled with organisms busily sopping up and remaking every crumb of detritus into new life. Ecosystem succession tends in this direction. So does the evolution of sustainable economies. Benyus reminds us, "We don't need to invent a sustainable world--that's been done already." It's all around us. We need only to learn from its success in sustaining the maximum of wealth with the minimum of materials flow.
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