Our Impact

We’re on a mission to help solve humanity’s biggest challenges through the adoption of biomimicry (nature-inspired innovation) in education, culture, and industry.

Here’s how we put your donations to work in 2022:

January – March

Naturalizing Biomimicry around the World

New Global Network Map

We launched a new Global Network map with 34 teams based in 23 different countries. Now anyone can connect with nature-inspired innovators across the world working to practice, teach, and spread biomimicry in their region or for a challenge area they are passionate about helping to solve.

GreenBiz featured Executive Director Beth Rattner in this article on expectations for the circular economy and how it will begin to recognize the failures of recycling.

Communications Director, Lex Amore, shared the promise of biomimicry and how the practice delivers hope and strategies on a recent episode of Changing the Climate podcast.

We reached 16K+ followers on LinkedIn! LinkedIn is quickly becoming a favorite among professionals and educators seeking the latest in biomimicry information.

AskNature.org: Inspiring with Nature’s Wisdom

Introducing the New AskNature Newsletter!

Now you can receive new biological strategies and biomimetic innovations straight to your inbox. Sign up for the new AskNature newsletter to receive the latest from our ever-growing library of adaptations, discoveries, and diverse perspectives of nature from cultures around the world.

Performance and Partnerships

188K+
Visitors Reached

New Indigenous knowledge content partnership formed with the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

760K
Page Views

Biomimicry at the World Expo in Dubai Collection created to tie in with Biomimicry 3.8’s exhibit there.
 

30+ More
Freshly Updated Biological Strategies

Tune into a conversation on the SustainabiliME podcast featuring Brand Marketing Director Megan Dwyer.

Transforming Educational Experiences with Biomimicry

Biomimicry Biographies

In January, we launched the Biomimicry Biography series. This series features leaders in the biomimicry movement providing sound advice for young learners seeking to make a difference.

In January, Youth Education launched the Biomimicry Cadre for Grades 4 and 5. The biomimicry practitioners, NGSS leads, and classroom teachers created a student survey of standards-based, engaging phenomena that will be used to drive biomimicry instruction.

Listen to the Green Teacher Podcast featuring as Youth Education Director, Rosanna Ayers, as she shares the intricacies of biomimetic design and what educators can do to open students’ eyes to the wisdom of nature.

 Rosanna Ayers spoke alongside a panel of educators in March at the Central CREEC California Environmental Literacy Project (CELP) Virtual Conference, working to improve environmental literacy across the region.

Innovation: Advancing Nature-Inspired Solutions

9 Incredible Startups Completed the 2021 Biomimicry Launchpad

Our incubator program designed to help these innovators take their work from the lab to the marketplace. Learn how they are addressing environmental and social issues with nature-inspired innovations.

Program and Participant Updates

Director of Innovation Jared Yarnall-Schane presented to 20 cabinet-level Ministers of Science and Technology.

spotLESS Materials closes over $1.3M venture capital funding and expands industrial partnerships.

Ray of Hope Prize participant Biohm featured in The Guardian (and fungi getting the attention they deserve)!

Systems Change: Tackling Fashion Waste

Design for Decomposition

Coming out of our new Systems Change initiative, Design for Decomposition launched with a milestone announcement and microsite. Hear from scientist and biomimetic design expert Ellie Banwell on how and why we’re bringing decomposition into the systems change conversation.

Fireside Chat: Watch a short video encapsulating the longer chat. View the full chat on the initiative here.

In the Field: In partnership with the OR Foundation, we recently completed waste characterization study for market textiles in Accra and the first phase of a beach waste study.

Biomimicry in Museums from Coast to Coast

Wild Creativity at OMSI

The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) is progressing with a phenomenal new exhibition that provides hands-on experiences in Introducing Biomimicry, Nature’s Ingenuity, Biomimicry in Action, Engineering Design Challenges, and Biomimicry in Your Community.

In the “Biomimicry in Action” component of the OMSI exhibit: Nexloop, Nucleario, H2U, and youth teams Reflective Roof and Stillae. The “Biomimicry in Your Community” videos have individuals from Bryosoil, Aquacycle, Methanolite and MyOak.

Cape Cod Museum of Natural History: We have confirmed a film partnership with CCMNH, securing placement of Promise of Biomimicry video in the museum lobby to be shown to 50,000 annual visitors.

New Faces at the Biomimicry Institute

We’ve been growing our mighty team in order to meet the growing demand for biomimicry and nature-inspired solutions.

Brian Oliva (he/him), Youth Education Program Assistant

Bay Area, California
Before joining the Institute, Brian served as the Alameda County Area Manager for a company that ran LEGO® STEM afterschool enrichment programs, where he oversaw a group of instructors and managed the logistics for all programs throughout Alameda County Elementary Schools. He is constantly looking to build things, whether it be LEGO®, woodworking or model kits.

Sarah McInerney (she/her), Ray of Hope Prize Program Manager

Cleveland, Ohio
Traditionally trained as a zoologist and educator, Sarah completed her PhD in integrated bioscience focusing on the potential of biomimicry to advance corporate sustainability through design and behavior. Through this work, she has provided professional biomimicry education and innovation services for a variety of audiences from Fortune 500 companies to K-12 institutions.

Dave Hutchins (he/him), Launchpad Program Manager

Butte, Montana
Dave brings a background in environmental engineering with a PhD in materials science, where his research focused on remediating mining impacted waters. He has served as a research associate at the Center for Advanced Materials Processing and as professor with Montana Technological University. Dave is also a sculptor, entrepreneur, and amateur journalist.

April – June

Naturalizing Biomimicry around the World

25th Anniversary of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature

In May, we celebrated 25 years since the publishing of Janine Benyus’s book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature with a virtual discussion that connected biomimicry learners and practitioners from around the world. Janine shared the journey of how biomimicry started out as a meme and has turned into a global movement.

To celebrate the biomimicry movement, 52 collaborators from around the world recently contributed videos sharing what biomimicry has meant to them in their personal and professional lives.

This campaign helped us hit the 4,000-subscriber mark on YouTube! If you want the latest in biomimicry and to hear from practitioners from around the world, subscribe today!

AskNature.org: Inspiring with Nature’s Wisdom

New Biological Strategy Diagrams Make Learning Easier

AskNature users are beginning to see a new wave of custom diagrams on updated biological strategy pages. These illustrations synthesize information from diverse sources to quickly and accurately convey the information most relevant for the practice of biomimicry. Their clear, consistent style has been designed to increase engagement and understanding on the platform for all users––and especially for young learners.

Performance and Partnerships

198K+
Visitors Reached

Learn From “The Rise and Reign of the Mammals” in this New Collection with Essay by Steve Brusatte.

705K
Page Views

Collaborating with Wonderspace for 40
Episodes: Hear from Chief Editor
Andrew Howley in Latest Episode.

3
New Biological Strategy Collections

Explore this Collection celebrating innovations from the past 25 years of biomimicry.

AskNature in Your Inbox

We continue to grow the number of recipients for the monthly AskNature newsletter, which brings the latest biological strategies, stories, and innovations straight to your inbox.

Transforming Educational Experiences with Biomimicry

Youth Design Challenge Winners Announced!

Every year, our Youth Design Challenge engages thousands of students around the world with biomimicry curriculum and the challenge of using nature-inspired ideas to solve environmental and social issues most important to the students. In May, we were proud to announce the 2022 winners!

Over 12,000 students were exposed to Biomimicry Youth Design Challenge curriculum in the 2021-2022 school year.

484  educators and coaches signed up for the curriculum to introduce to their middle and high school students.

12 countries were represented from the 95 national submissions and 30 international submissions.

Urban Floodwater Reduction System

High School First Place

The Fire Forewarner

Middle School First Place

Youth Education Director Rosanna Ayers presented to science educators from across California at the 2022 Central California Regional Environmental Education Community (CREEC) Network’s California Environmental Literacy Project Conference.

Innovation: Advancing Nature-Inspired Solutions

Ray of Hope Prize applications are in!

In order to discover the most promising nature-inspired startups in the world, we recently worked with over 50 pipeline partners and the global biomimicry community. The results are blowing us away! Here’s a snapshot of this year’s results:

  • 212 applications from 54 different countries.
  • Half of these applications have a founding team that is at least 40% female.
  • 16% of applications have a founding team of at least 40% that identify as members of a racial or ethnic group that is historically underrepresented in tech and entrepreneurship
  • Represent the regenerative future of agriculture, sanitation, construction, remediation advanced materials, colorants, textiles, energy, and more

Once the 10 finalists are selected, they will participate in the Ray of Hope Prize program, a 10-week program that delivers sustainable business training, communications support, and opportunities for non-dilutive funding—the top being a $100,000 equity-free prize.

Program and Participant Updates

Read “How Three Companies are Solving Problems Using Biomimicry” in GreenBiz to learn about Ray of Hope Prize finalists ECOncrete, Impossible Materials, and Biohm.

Check out the article “Plants: Nature’s Original Innovators” in BBC Earth that features the solutions designed by 2020 Ray of Hope Prize Finalist, Change:Water Labs is featured.

Our Innovation team returned to the in-person Circularity event to speak on stage about biomimicry in the startup space, as well as the Living Future virtual conference.

Systems Change: Tackling Fashion Waste

Design for Decomposition

Our new Systems Change initiative, Design for Decomposition, continues to lead a new standard for industrial symbiosis. Beginning with the fashion sector, we are engaging in a two-year, multi-million dollar project to demonstrate scalable new pathways for ~92 million tons of fashion waste discarded annually by embracing true decomposition—the way leaves break down into soil—that builds healthy ecosystems.

Since April, we have:

  • Selected both Rotterdam and Berlin as two well-resourced cities in which to conduct textile waste pilots. The pilots will seek commercially ready decomposition technologies that convert wasted clothes and textiles into bio-compatible raw materials — or those that jibe with nature, and eventually, decompose.
  • Completed a technology map of 135 biomimetic approaches to decomposition
  • Conducted water (and soil) testing of a dumpsite in Accra, Ghana—an effort led by The Or Foundation, supported by researchers from University of Ghana.

By learning from nature, we are proving it’s possible to turn those neglected carbon molecules back into something useful for the biosphere.

New Faces at the Biomimicry Institute

We’ve been growing our mighty team in order to meet the growing demand for biomimicry and nature-inspired solutions.

Kelli Young (she/her), Administrative Assistant – Human Resources

Bozeman Area, Montana
Kelli brings over 15 years of Human Resources experience to the Biomimicry Institute. She earned her BA in Psychology from Roanoke College, VA and a Masters of Professional Studies in Human Resources and Employment Relations from Penn State, PA. Kelli also holds a certificate in Supervisory Leadership from the University of California, Irvine. Kelli and her husband enjoy the outdoors and together have visited roughly half of the national parks in the United States. Recent transplants to Montana, they look forward to introducing their young son to the great outdoors.

Jen Fredette (she/her), Visual Design Manager

Western Montana
Jen is the Visual Design Manager for The Biomimicry Institute and its initiatives. She is a web and graphic designer with deep roots in communications and storytelling. She and her husband live on a 20-acre homestead with their four children. She is a dedicated CrossFit athlete and coach and loves spending time rafting the amazing rivers of Western Montana with her family. Jen graduated from The University of Montana with a degree in Communications but is continuously inspired by nature and all that it has to lend to positive and prosperous living.

July – September

Naturalizing Biomimicry around the World

Disappearing Freaks of Nature

Could we be obsessed with death and indifferent to extinction? Writer, biomimicry graduate student, and Director at Fragile Earth, Kate Losey, addresses the question and more in her hugely popular article that captured the need to protect even the scariest of organisms for the secrets they hold. From learning what killer worms have to do with plastic pollution to sloth spines and the future of infrastructure and energy, this piece brought a piece of biomimicry to a very wide and engaged audience.

More Social than Ever

We are bringing biomimicry to you, and having a blast in the process. In the last few months, we’ve upped our production and sharing on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Medium, answering the call for nature-inspiration and innovative solutions. Best of all, when you engage with us on these networks, you (and algorithms!) help spread the message of biomimicry as well.

LinkedIn                    Instagram                    YouTube                    Medium

AskNature.org: Inspiring with Nature’s Wisdom

New Printable Strategy Pages

We are always working to make AskNature the most educational and inspirational platform it can be. To make in-class or at-home sharing easier, we’ve created a set of our most popular biological strategies in a print-friendly format. 

Performance and Partnerships

AskNature in Your Inbox

We continue to grow the number of recipients for the monthly AskNature newsletter, which brings the latest biological strategies, stories, and innovations straight to your inbox.

Transforming Educational Experiences with Biomimicry

In August and September, we joined PocketLab’s Science is Cool webinar series to introduce our Youth Design Challenge to thousands of youth educators and shared ways 6–12-grade educators can begin to introduce biomimicry as a pathway to sustainable design.

Watch the recording from August, September, and learn more.

Meet the New Youth Design Challenge

We are excited to introduce the new and improved Youth Design Challenge. Not only will educators find a simplified and streamlined process for lesson planning, they’ll find the flow of the MIMIC curriculum to be enhanced–all based on educator feedback from last year’s Challenge. 

You’ll also find clearer alignment with the 5E instructional model, updated worksheets, and activities to guide you along the way.

Innovation: Advancing Nature-Inspired Solutions

Meet the 2022 Ray of Hope Prize Finalists

Every year, we scour the world to find the most promising nature-inspired startups. This year, we are blown away by who we found and the nature-inspired solutions they are bringing to the marketplace. Each of the participating startups have the potential to reduce or eliminate many current extractive industries and practices, while revitalizing degraded ecosystems—a prize we all can celebrate.

Bringing Nature-Inspired Startup Leaders into Nature

In September, we brought the 2022 Ray of Hope Prize Finalists into the Redwoods of Northern California for a week-long expedition to reconnect with nature. Over the years, we’ve found that most researchers and nature-inspired innovators have not had deep experiences in nature. More importantly, they’ve lacked experiences in nature with like-minded nature-inspired leaders who face similar challenges. This expedition has become a key part of our program and is unique among accelerators.

To improve learning and connections for all, we invited past Ray of Hope Prize participants to share their experience, and venture capital leaders to give their perspective on what the 2022 finalists will face in their growth journey. 

“No email and no cell connection for a week would normally make me very nervous. Thankfully I had the company of amazing founders to inspire and captivate my imagination. Grateful to the Biomimicry Institute for hosting the Ray of Hope finalists for this immersive retreat! New friends and new collaborations have been forever forged!” ~Joanne Rodriguez, Myocycle

Alumni News

Impossible Materials’ natural alternative to titanium dioxide featured in FI Global Insights.

Aquammodate and its water purification technology makes Norrsken’s Impact100 list.

Better Ventures backs Cypris Materials in their pursuit for safe, high-performance colors.

Innovation in Your Inbox

Sign up below to receive quarterly news from the Innovation initiative. You’ll get the latest in nature-inspired innovation including industry news and best practices, cutting edge research, and updates from our participants.

Systems Change: Tackling Fashion Waste

Rotterdam and Accra Opportunity Assessments: Complete!

In the last three months, we and our on-ground partners have completed the Opportunity Assessments for our first pilot cities, Rotterdam and Accra. These assessments have enabled us to:

  • Gain a holistic understanding of the natural, social, and industrial ecosystem needs and vulnerabilities of the pilot city and the surrounding region.
  • Leverage existing data (or gather, in the case of Accra), and stakeholder knowledge to map the material flows of post-consumer textiles (quantity and composition) in the pilot city, and the factors that are involved in the decision making on distribution to different material cycling destinations;
  • Utilize the Design for Decomposition Theory of Change in order to connect long term desired outcomes to opportunity areas for implementing decomposition pathways.

Together, this work will inform which decomposition technologies we select for the pilots. A huge step on our two-year, multi-million-dollar project to demonstrate scalable new pathways for ~92 million tons of fashion waste discarded annually. How? By embracing true decomposition—the way leaves break down into soil—that builds healthy ecosystems. 

October – December

Naturalizing Biomimicry around the World

Biomimicry and Philosophy

The biomimicry movement is highly practical in orientation. And yet, underlying and motivating the practices of biomimicry, there lies a distinctive philosophy–a profound way of understanding and relating to nature that challenges many of the core assumptions of contemporary thought. The central philosophical claim of biomimicry is epistemological; it is a claim about knowledge. Traditional epistemology holds that the knowledge humans possess is generated either by themselves, through the senses, reason, introspection, or memory, or by other humans, who pass it on to them, generally in the form of testimony (Audi 1998). Nature, from this perspective, is only ever an object of human knowledge, something we learn about.

More Social than Ever

We are bringing biomimicry to you, and having a blast in the process. In the last few months, we’ve upped our production and sharing on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Medium, answering the call for nature-inspiration and innovative solutions. Best of all, when you engage with us on these networks, you (and algorithms!) help spread the message of biomimicry as well.

LinkedIn                    Instagram                    YouTube                    Medium

AskNature.org: Inspiring with Nature’s Wisdom

Custom Illustrations Enhance AskNature

To improve learning on AskNature, we are continuing to add custom illustrations to the site, including Sea Otter Fur, Polar Bear Fur, and Camel Fur. Why custom illustrations? Because they simply don’t exist otherwise. 

We are also adding the custom animations created from Ray of Hope Prize finalist videos. These quick animations demonstrate the ‘how’ behind biological strategies. Another great way to learn. Check out these examples: 

Morpho | White Beetle | Pitcher Plant | Mantis Shrimp

Performance and Partnerships

180K+
Visitors Reached

570K
Page Views

35
New Innovations from University Labs

AskNature in Your Inbox

We continue to grow the number of recipients for the monthly AskNature newsletter, which brings the latest biological strategies, stories, and innovations straight to your inbox.

Transforming Educational Experiences with Biomimicry

Meet the New Youth Design Challenge

The 2022-2023 Youth Design Challenge was officially launched on October 3rd! Kicking it off, an Updated Curriculum.

The newly designed Youth Design Challenge will be easier to follow by educators, have a more aligned biomimicry process to what we teach with the design spiral, and have clearer alignment to the 5E instructional model.

Advice from Biomimicry Professionals

We are committed to showing students that learning and practicing biomimicry is so much more than a school lesson. A life lesson, absolutely. Even a professional pathway. With Biomimicry Biographies, students will hear from scientists, researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and more about how biomimicry has shaped their lives.

Innovation: Advancing Nature-Inspired Solutions

Meet the 2022 Ray of Hope Prize Winner

In October, we were thrilled to announce GreenPod Labs as 2022’s Ray of Hope Prize winner. An agricultural biotechnology startup based in India, GreenPod Labs is focused on tackling food loss problems in developing countries. By learning how fruits and vegetables naturally resist pest and fungal pathogens, Greenpod Labs showcases how learning from nature can solve both climate and societal problems.

Fusion Bionic GmbH was selected as the runner-up. Inspired by nature’s surface textures, they have developed a novel laser technology capable of integrating functional micro- and nanostructures to replace today’s ecologically harmful surface finishing and manufacturing technologies.

Both GreenPod Labs and Fusion Bionic GmbH were chosen from a field of 212 companies from 54 countries. Each is out to tackle a sustainable development goal, disrupt extractive industries, and create a life-friendly future for all.

We are so proud of all 10 of our finalists and can’t wait to see where they go from here.

Alumni News

Mussel Polymers featured in Composite World for their new product launch.

Biome Renewables featured on The Sustainable Markets Initiative’s Re-TV.org

Fusion Bionic selected to EU-funded project to advance functional, bio-inspired surfaces made with lasers.

Innovation in Your Inbox

Sign up below to receive quarterly news from the Innovation initiative. You’ll get the latest in nature-inspired innovation including industry news and best practices, cutting edge research, and updates from our participants.

Systems Change: Tackling Fashion Waste

In collaboration with our partners, we’ve completed a number of milestones:

  • The Or Foundation, our partner in Ghana, completed a Waste Landscape Analysis, exploring how waste from the Global North comes to end up in Accra (15 million garments a week). They also documented the many pathways the textiles take once they are off-loaded from containers, including what happens once textiles are deemed “waste” by secondhand clothing sellers, often because they cannot store the textiles or sell them fast enough. 
  • With the Metabolic Institute, we identified over 160 decomposition technologies that could be used to break down textiles, including identifying specific inputs and outputs. These technologies were matched to a specific geographical location and turned into a system map in order to identify missing connections. We found several opportunities where D4D thinking might combine technologies to improve the efficiency of existing textile recycling infrastructure.
  • With the Center for Green Chemistry & Green Engineering at Yale, we completed a review of existing biodegradation standard protocols. This work will be used to add to and recommend alternatives to the existing flawed standardized tests for biodegradation.

New Faces at the Biomimicry Institute

We’ve been growing our mighty team in order to meet the growing demand for biomimicry and nature-inspired solutions.

Katia Hargrave (she/her), Design for Decomposition Project Assistance

Orange County, California
Katia is driven by a passion to meaningfully and sustainably address social justice issues. She brings a unique mix of experiences from living and working across North America, South America, and South/Southeast Asia. Katia draws from her roles at an impact startup, an early-stage impact VC, an impact-focused investment bank, and at an impact advisory firm. She applies these experiences and her international development background to support the systems change work at the Biomimicry Institute.

Donate to the Biomimicry Institute

Support the Next Generation of Nature-Inspired Innovators

Imagine a world where everything we make is inspired by the natural world. By supporting the Biomimicry Institute, you:

  • Help bring biomimicry education to more students
  • Accelerate the growth of nature-inspired startups
  • Increase the number of biological strategies and resources
    on AskNature.org and across our entire organization

Tap into nature: