Green roofs as ecosystems. Bringing daylight back into buildings. Thinking of energy efficiency as a resource. Eating invasive species. Biomimicry. These were all subjects of talks sponsored by Conservation Magazine at the Conservation Remix event in Seattle in early June. Videos of these talks and more are now posted on the Conservation Remix website.

Conservation Magazine featured several of these topics in previous issues. For example, John Edel, a Chicago entrepreneur, has transformed an abandoned meat-packing facility into the nation’s first vertical farm, with the goal of bringing large-scale, net-zero-waste food production right into the middle of the city. Dusty Gedge, a feisty Brit whose talk you’ll find entertaining, advocates not only green roofs, but green roofs that double as habitat. Brent Constantz, who presented at our Biomimicry Education Summit in San Francisco, looks to coral for how we can make concrete with a smaller carbon footprint.

I was honored to be included among the speakers and based my biomimicry talk on a quote from Janine Benyus, “Biomimicry is a vision of a world that works.” I started by pointing out that we already know what a world that works looks like–it’s found in the organisms and ecosystems around us. This sense that we’re not alone and that there are natural teachers out there who can help us is behind the hope that we feel when we approach our design challenges through biomimicry.