Ep 154: Biomimicry's role in transforming industries | The origins of the circular economy

Colin Webster 00:00

Well hello, and welcome to the Circular Economy Show from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. You're joining me, Colin Webster, with my colleague, Pippa Shawley.

Pippa Shawley 00:11

Hi Colin, we know at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that we didn't invent this idea of the circular economy. But we did reframe it. And we took some inspiration from other schools of thought. So we thought we'd dive into what those schools of thought were and look at how they're applied today. So you want to give a little introduction to which topics they are. Yeah, that's

Colin Webster 00:29

Yeah, that's right. So this is a five part series, where we're going to look at the origins of the circular economy as you see Pepa. So we will look at Cradle to Cradle, Regenerative Design, Industrial Ecology, the Performance Economy, and in this episode, we shall look at Biomimicry.

Pippa Shawley 00:44

And I think what will be really nice in this is to go beyond the theory of some of these and look at how they're applied today, and how they relate to the circular economy as we see it.

Colin Webster 00:53

Absolutely. That's right. So we're starting with biomimicry and Pippa, I fought I hold a gun to your head and they say what does biomimicry mean to you?

Pippa Shawley 01:01

I do love a pop quiz. But this is maybe quite tricky to answer. So for me, it means inspired by nature, so looking at what technologies nature has in itself, and then applying that to our human world. So one example that I've heard quite often is about the bullet train in Japan. And when it was originally designed, it created a sonic boom, which when it went through tunnels, it shattered windows, made this horrible noise and wasn't really fit for purpose. And then a guy came along. He was also an ornithologist, and looked at the way that Kingfisher flies and goes through water, and so redesigned the train. So it has this beak, which is also better, it creates better airflow so you don't get that Sonic Boom. Am I going along the right track? So Colin? Yeah, as

Colin Webster 01:51

far as I'm concerned, that's like the classic case study of biomimicry and action. Right. We've got two guests on the podcast this week. Let's hear how one of them defines biomimicry.

Stefano Semprini 02:04

Biomimicry is the practice and the perspective and the philosophy of looking to nature for solutions to our wicked our complex problems.

Pippa Shawley 02:16

So it's beyond just this one product this one train there's one building it sounds like it's a whole system.

Colin Webster 02:22

Yes. And we'll hear that says the Stefano Semprini because the co director of primerica South Africa, and we'll hear a lot from him in this episode, where he he looks at biomimicry as something much, much bigger than simply product innovation. And let's start with a little bit of the origins of where biomimicry comes from. And I think a lot of our audience may know this already that the big figurehead name, of course, in biomimicry is Janine Benyus.

Pippa Shawley 02:47

Yeah. We've had her a few times on the show, and she always goes down very well. Yes,

Colin Webster 02:51

I can well imagine. Right. So she wrote the book and in 1987, literally wrote the book and biomimicry, biomimicry inspired by nature, in which she encourages people to ask what would nature do when confronted with a problem and that problem could be at a product level, but it could also be at a systems level as the final was suggesting there. And subsequently, Janine has been behind or one of the people pushing for the launch of the Biomimicry Institute, which is all about education and taking the idea of biomimicry across the world. And in fact, that's where biomimicry South Africa comes from, I believe that that kind of push to and then they have a consultancy firm as well. Biomimicry 3.8, which you may well have heard of, too. But let's get back to Stefano. And in this conversation I have with the final you'll hear us talk about a favorite film of mine called Mind walk. But we'll get to that later. First of all, I asked the final if he's concerned that people have become disconnected from nature.

Stefano Semprini 03:50

I'm in the same school of I, you know, I've spent a long time trying to understand this. My training and biomimicry went hand in hand with some worthless training, self directed training and systems thinking and that was my that was my search for root causes to try and understand why are we where we are. And that's always continued. You'll have the likes of McGilchrist, who wrote the master and his emissary, the divided brain and the making of the Western world will point out that point out that in any organism or organism where we find a brain, we find that the brain has two hemispheres. Now, why is that? Because we apparently need two different types of attention. And to survive one which is wide and paying attention to the patterns one which is narrow and highly focused. That gives us the ability to pay attention to details and bolt and have the dexterity to use tools and so on. And turns out that we need two different bits of neurological hardware to do those two different types of attention. Now, in McGoldrick goes on to point out that we've somehow created a world where we've doubled down on the detail orientated mode of attention on the left hemisphere, whereas it's the broader perspective of the right hemisphere which is actually Primary in some senses. So I think there has been a, there's been a schism there, as I said that I see as one component of it. And then other thought leaders, I follow the likes of Fritjof Capra will point out that, you know, our, our converging crises of our time are symptoms of a of a single crisis, a meta crisis of perception. So it's again, it's us perceiving ourselves as separate from nature, is the very cause of us becoming more separated from nature. And I have other deeply philosophical only partially scientifically validated ideas about why this is, but I'm going to mention just one, which is that I can't wait to help notice how around the time when we started seeing the first large city states, arising in the world was also when we started to find the major faith based traditions arising in the world which started which all in one way or another said to us, we, there's something wrong with our nature, we need to we need to impose principles and rules upon how we live, we've sinned, we've strayed from the past. And, and I think when we started to dominate our own nature, that's when we really started to bifurcate and diverge from from the rest of life, rather than just allowing ourselves to be with it and to and to not dominate ourselves.

Colin Webster 06:16

Okay, of Capra, g=have you seen the film Mind Walk?

Stefano Semprini 06:19

I have, I love it.

Colin Webster 06:20

I absolutely love, I always recommend it to people, because it captures a lot of what you've just said, it covers all of this, and very accessible, slightly outdated looking, but nevertheless, the content is so good, that...

Stefano Semprini 06:34

It's so rich.

Colin Webster 06:36

People love it, when they watch it, they've got reservations, but then they see it, and they're like, Whoa, this is big.

Stefano Semprini 06:42

Yeah, they get it. And you know, I just, I love how they use the environmental movie to explain the Cartesian divide, you know, literally going and looking at the clockwork, you know, because that obviously refers back to this idea that, that if you if you if you take apart the clock and understand how its parts, then if you put it back together, you understand the clock, and we know that life doesn't function that way is that emergence, and wholeness is a property it's a quality of a system, which only exists at the level of the sum of the parts. It doesn't exist in any of the parts individually. And so there's this, you know, there, we start to get into understanding exactly how ecosystems come into being.

Pippa Shawley 07:22

Colin, I've never seen this film mine work. Would you mind describing what it's about? For me and other listeners that might not have watched it either?

Colin Webster 07:30

Yeah, sure. He talked a little bit about the broad themes there. But in essence, it's a conversation between three people. So there's a politician, an artist, or a writer, I think he's a writer, and a scientist, and they're wandering around a monastery in France, having a conversation about the state of the world, the state of science, the state of politics. And in essence, the politicians getting a real schooling, particularly from the scientist, about the fact that we're thinking of our problems in the wrong way. In our language, we're looking at things in a linear way and not from a systems perspective, understanding all of the the minut connections between actions and outcomes. And the the film itself is based on the script is based on this work of Fritjof Capra, who is his is a physicist who's written some very influential books on the matter. And I think it was his brother who actually directed this film. But like I said, there to Stefano, some people have reservations on it first, tell him about the film because it maybe doesn't sound that exciting. But as soon as you start watching it, you're 10 minutes and you're hooked. So give it a go, pepper. All right, I'm gonna seek that one out. Right. So as you might have picked up there from the conversation so far, Stefano, is very much a big picture guy, let's get back to that conversation with him. But nevertheless, when I look at, say, a website, like ask nature are good examples of biomimicry, I often see the detail and the small picture, but not often the big picture, what does is that fear somebody? And what does biomimicry have to say about the big picture?

Stefano Semprini 09:09

It's a really, really good question. I think we focus on the details. Because at the level of forms, it's easier to solve problems at the stage where we're simply not sophisticated enough in the practice, I would say to really get into the the nitty gritty because when we start start talking about the bigger picture we're really talking about is social economic problems. We're talking about how do we redesign our economy? How do we build organizations that function like ecosystems? So at the level of form, which is where most of those technologies are arising, it's, it's just It's simply easier to do at that level, number one, number two, it's easier to again, it comes back to the question of economics because it's easier to create a marketable product at that level. And, and also, we live in a, you know, we live in a world where, by and large, there's a techno optimist, you know, narrative at play which we believe that it's just that next at one technology that's just around the corner, that's going to save us. And so we, we think that if we just, you know, again, we think that if we have, my view is that if we just use biomimicry to create more efficient and more elegant and more sophisticated technology, then we're just going to make the world a more efficient world eating machine, we're not going to get to the root cause. I think at the deeper level, what does biomimicry have to say about it? Again, I think it comes back to appreciating our nature and observing ourselves as a species as a social animal and saying, let's not let for presuppose the rules of how we should be, let's do this, you know, using observation, let's use heuristics. Let's look at our own behavior, and then model what we should be doing based on that rather than saying, rather than saying, Oh, look, there's something we've done something wrong. Now we have to correct for that let's use our intelligent brands to to do that. I am, I'm, I would never do what some have done, which is to say, oh, let's look at you know, ants and how colonies thrive and try to apply something some of the social dynamics there to to human systems. I don't I don't think we're going to get at it that way. I think it's just, it's too much of a of a superposition. You know, so it really I think is a process of for me, biomimicry, at the level of the socio economic is, it's, it's psychology, it's, it's, it's about our emotions, it's about our relationships. And it's very soft.

Pippa Shawley 11:25

So Colin, I want to stop it, stop it here and just reflect on what Stefan has just said. Because I think when we often talk about biomimicry, I think we think about those ant colonies and their behavior, or we use fungi patterns to influence town planning that I've read about that quite a lot recently. But Stefan is talking on a different level here. Can you back up a little bit and go into that?

Colin Webster 11:51

I think, for me, yeah, is is he's saying it's not about literally applying some of these rules, but it's about applying what we instinctively understand about how nature or living systems operate. And I would say that that is something that we do with the circular economy, and we talk about it being inspired by living systems, but it can never completely mimic them. But if it has that, that the understanding underlying rules of how these systems work and, and realizing that there are these deeper, more complex connections, that we can't control every aspect of it, and this is what systems thinking is ultimately about. For me, that is what he's saying. It's understanding that there's complexity, but I think being humble enough to realize that we can't control every aspect.

Pippa Shawley 12:38

I think being humble is something that's emerging from what's defiantly saying, yeah, and

Colin Webster 12:43

he very much is as big picture at every stage as In fact, I went on to ask Him that very question. So it sounds to me like you're saying biomimicry has a role to play in a bigger picture philosophy?

Stefano Semprini 12:58

I think that's exactly it's when we talk about the three C's of biomimicry. You know, the, the practice of biomimicry is framed having three components. The most superficial I would say is the emulation, the innovation inspired by nature. Within that Western say we have the ethos. So again, that's the philosophy but within that it's the it's the connection or the reconnection to ourselves into the world around us. So it's about really it is about a philosophical question of what are our values and where do we derive our values? And then saying, that's, that's saying, what's our why? Why are we doing what we're doing? Why are we doing this journey of progress? And then say, Okay, what do we really need and want to see in the world? And then biomimicry, and regenerative practices like us, give us the howl?

Pippa Shawley 13:40

Colin, this is all quite deep. It's it's much more than just taking that Kingfisher idea on the train, or the ant colonies.

Colin Webster 13:51

Yeah, you know, I found throughout the conversation with Stefano, I kept wanting to push them to tell us a bit some cool product innovation. Yeah. Because I guess, to my shame, that's where my mind goes quite a lot. When I think about biomimicry as as the blades and the turbine that could be redesigned, and the shape of the fin of the wheel and so on.

Pippa Shawley 14:11

I also think that's a real thing with the circular economy in general is that we're now at a place where we feel like we understand a lot of the theories and the reasoning why we should do it, but we're all really desperate to just start applying it.

Colin Webster 14:24

Right. Yeah, I think that is where we're at. Right? We're at that implementation stage now of the circular economy. So with that in mind, let's look at the implementation of Well, in this case of biomimicry, we've got a second guest. His name is Chad was link off and he is serial entrepreneur, and he's the CEO of helicoid. Who make helikites

Pippa Shawley 14:48

What is a helicoid, Colin?

Colin Webster 14:51

Oh, that's a bit embarrassing. Well, just as well. I asked Chad, so goodness over to him.

Chad Wasilenkoff 14:57

Yeah, so the helicoid is a is a shape or structure. So our technology is biomimetic meaning it came and it was inspired by nature. It came from this mantis shrimp. So it's evolved over hundreds of millions of years. And this mantis shrimp has these two clubs in front of it, it smashes other known hard organisms, and it does it hundreds of 1000s of times without breaking the clubs. This movement is actually the fastest movement of any organism on the planet, it actually boils the water and cavitate the water, it's so fast. And as I said, it doesn't hundreds of 1000s of times without breaking. So the researchers and scientists wanted to understand that and their original thought was it must be some super material. But it wasn't it was just this internal architecture, it's a way of dissipating energy. And from that, it has, again, extreme performance. And that shape that it makes is called a healer coin. So for your viewers, the best way to think about it, if you have a table in front of you, if all the fibers were laid out at zero degrees, just straight away from you right now, the next layer, it doesn't matter if you go left or right, but so you go left 10 degrees, and do the entire table again, and then keep going left by 10 degrees, 10 degrees, that shape with that rotation is called a Hewlett coin. Through their evaluation, they've also at this at the same group of universities that were studying all this helicoid have also found over 50 other organisms on the planet that have incredibly strong performance characteristics. There's a Beetle in California, you can drive over it with a steamroller and things like that. And these organisms as well have evolved over hundreds of millions of years with this internal illiquid architecture. So these universities originally patented this technology for use in any and all composites, those patents are granted. And then I in turn, have licensed those should now commercialize them to roll them out into the composite world.

Pippa Shawley 16:37

So helicoid is inspired by a violent shrimp. It is insane club bits attached to the front of it with these layered lattice structure, which is extremely powerful. And I guess, when you apply that to human technologies, there are lots of potential uses there, Colin.

Colin Webster 17:02

There are an almost endless number of uses, as a child goes on to tell us.

Chad Wasilenkoff 17:08

So our helicoid technology is an internal architecture for composites. So if you think about a traditional composite, you might see whether it's carbon fiber, or fiberglass, say in a BMW or Mercedes, you typically see that woven carbon fiber, traditional look and field that unfortunately is not as strong as it could be using the same fibers and the same resin, but just putting it together differently in the shape of a helicoid internally can almost double the performance. And so your choices are to get better performance and safety. Or you can use less of the raw material to get the same safety and performance. And you know, the lighter weight products, which helps with your electric vehicle you ever see a better range, lighter composites in aerospace, I mean, the plane can go farther, better fuel efficiency, without sacrificing that performance.

Colin Webster 17:54

Tell me what the story is about how your company uses this healer quite architecture.

Chad Wasilenkoff 18:02

Sure. So I'm not a composite expert or an engineer. I'm more of a serial entrepreneur. So I've built over 30 successful companies. I've taken more than a dozen companies public and raised over a billion dollars for those various companies. I've got one unicorn and lots of exits in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And I was actually volunteering at the University of San Diego and the University of Riverside here in California. My mentor some of the professors and guests speak at their entrepreneurial classes and help some students. I also do some judging kind of like the Shark Tank and things like that. And from that I was on with one of these groups one night and I said you know, you have a collective group of universities here, they call it the regents, you do hundreds of millions of dollars of research every year you have in house patent lawyers, what's the most interesting, disruptive ready to commercialize technology that you have, and they all said it was the sea liquid. So I heard heard a little bit more about it started to do some research on composites got quite excited. To be honest, it sounded too good to be true. So then I went and found an industry expert, as I always do with my various companies to do the due diligence. So I found a gentleman he had just retired within a couple of months. So his his experience was very relevant. But he'd spent 35 years at Boeing, all in composites. He was in charge of projects for $30 million to take, you know, two or three pounds of weight of an airplane. So he did flew down, did all the due diligence. So this thing is game changing. He actually asked Can I join the company, and I'd like to actually get all my compensation and equity or shares because he believes in it so much. So that was sort of the impetus of the company, and we built about four and a half years ago. And we've grown it ever since we now have over 50 different customers that are engaged at various stages of prototyping, testing and things like that. We're in the global leading hockey stick. So CCM has finally announced and launched it so if you go down to your sporting goods retailer, you'll find the top of the line CCM hockey stick has our logo down on the blade. So

Pippa Shawley 19:49

Colin, it sounds like this heat liquid material is stronger and lighter than alternative materials like fiberglass and in turn that's money saving and materials. diving and it sounds like there are multiple uses for that. Yeah,

Colin Webster 20:02

I think you said there 50 different customers are using the healer coins. And that's really fascinating because he talks about how he set the company up. And they don't actually make these products themselves, they license, the IP of the structure. That's why has so many different uses. Let's let Chad explain more.

Chad Wasilenkoff 20:24

When I originally started the company, I thought we were gonna get into manufacturing, I've had lots of businesses with 1000s of employees all over the world, and very comfortable in that environment. So my original business plan was to do that. But as we've evaluated it further and got deeper into how spectacular this performance can be, and how game changing can be disruptive to so many industries, we decided to go on a different business plan of licensing our technology. So rather than building as an example, the wind turbine blades is a huge industry, it's over 12 billion a year, we can have a big impact on that. But if I were to build a wind turbine blade site, I'd need a couple 100 employees probably 100 to $200 million in working capital to start both the capital expenditure, but obviously to build up the working capital to before we get our first sales. And that'll take several years. So we decided rather than doing that, for wind turbines, and hockey sticks, and pickleball rackets and automobile parts and things like that, we just go to the incumbents. So these large multibillion dollar companies, they already have market share. Rather than trying to compete with them, we're going to collaborate with them. It's also sort of a biomimetic type of theme that you find in nature for successful organisms. So from that, now, we've talked to these multibillion dollar companies, a lot of them have are well away well on their way for testing and trials. We've demonstrated 20 30%, improvements in either reducing raw material costs, reducing weight, improving fuel efficiency. And so we're actually a virtual company, we have no offices, we don't make anything, we just license our technology. So it's a long sales cycle, because nobody's going to take our word for it. But once they've done their testing and see how game changing it can be, and they adopt it, then again, we just collect royalty checks, if they want to utilize the benefit of the of the healer coin, because we have a family of patents that are global in nature, our product is applicable to 10s of 1000s of different products. So we have numbers I don't have off the top of my head. But even on an airplane, you know, we think we can take because a traditional commercial aircraft now and each one is a little different. And that's why there's no perfect map, but they're getting up to and some are even over 50% composite material. If you apply the healing coil to all of that I'm not saying they're going to but if you did, we think we could take up to 50,000 pounds of weight out of an aircraft, which the fuel efficiency would be off the charts in terms of its long term, long range, or increasing that range. And again, just being more efficient over time, especially over the lifetime of the part. As an example, we have one part we worked on with multiple customers, it's called an engine containment ring. So this the ring that goes around the turbine fan, so when you're sitting on a big airplane, you see the turbine spinning around in case a bird were to strike in there, it could cause a blade off of it, which could take the plane down. So a big safety feature is this ring of carbon fiber just to protect that blade off of them. We've already demonstrated we can take the raw material cost savings, just $38,000 per part for every, every time they would switch it just to heal the coin, we'd make that part 17% lighter. And of course, on the average, because it's always fuel efficient, or fuel prices are changing and the weight of the plane and things like that. But we estimate on average, that should say $5 million over the lifetime of that part in terms of fuel efficiency. So these are big, substantial numbers doesn't get adopted right away. There's a lot of testing and FDA approvals and things like that. But we're making great inroads with dozens of customers. In all the different industries are working on. We're demonstrating the performance.

Pippa Shawley 23:41

There are some really bold claims in there, like the idea that 50,000 tonnes which I just did a quick Google and it's about 22 and a half tonnes in metric can be saved. So that sounds like a really great thing to have. But this is a circular economy che Is it a circular product?

Colin Webster 24:04

So you're asking Can this product once it's no longer useful be turned into another one be repurposed in some way? Exactly. I mean, ultimately, it cannot be recycled. This is the big negative of the helicoid. Because it's a composite. It's very difficult. In fact, it's impossible to take apart at the end of his life. So definitely cross in the box when it comes to Circular Economy in that sense. But I think what you can pick up from what Chad was saying were all those positive things that the fuel efficiency on an aeroplane, if this is applied in a large scale would make incredible savings in terms of jet fuel used, because it's much tougher than its alternatives which are also not recyclable. By the way. The these parts would need replaced a lot less so there's some material savings to be made and that respect. And all of which adds up to financial savings. He said it's $5 million over the lifetime of one small part on an aeroplane. So of course, you scale that up. And you can see lots of benefits.

Pippa Shawley 25:11

Definitely. But where's the circularity fitting in this, Colin?

Colin Webster 25:15

Okay, keep pushing. Right. So, I mean, my take on all of this is, I think it's, I think it's a wonderful architecture. And it makes all of these great sevens that we can be excited about. But perhaps we see it doesn't quite fit with the circular economy, we know what the destination is for a circular economy, about materials that never never get out of these loops, these technical materials that are constantly in use for the long term. Yeah, this is not one of those that has that very long term process, because it cannot be recycled. But it makes all of these savings. So I would put this into a transitionary scenario, something that be extremely useful for helping us get over that line to bring down those fuel demands, and bring down some of those material demands to in order to help us get to where we want to be.

Pippa Shawley 26:07

That sounds positive, Colin.

Colin Webster 26:09

Thank you. Right. We're actually going to go back to Stefano now. To continue that chat a bit the circular economy. So let's head back to South Africa. Do you think in the circular economy, there's something about that bigger picture that that interests you?

Stefano Semprini 26:27

Absolutely. I mean, I'll start by saying that. My one gripe with saying the circular economy is that we're again talking about talking about it as a noun, it's saying the circular economy Where's in biomimicry, always trying to speak in terms of functions, you know, what is life doing? So it's it is certainly circulating value, it is circulating all the time. And what I love about just being able to say the circular economy, though, is that that was circulars that were, were we already saying, right, everything operates in cycles. And as soon as we do that, we get away from the linear waste based model of extraction and accumulation. So at a very, very high level, it's, it's, it gives us it gives us a Northstar to point to

Colin Webster 27:15

so again, it's that mindset change, isn't it like just like you said, to study biomimicry, or to study nature, is to immediately change your mindset and think about how the world works. The use for you the word circular does something similar?

Stefano Semprini 27:30

Absolutely. And you know, Michael Pollan in one of your previous podcasts already referenced Donella Meadows and her work on systems. And of course, she pointed out that within the model of the 12 leverage points in a system, you know, being able to recognize paradigms as paradigms and move between them is the is this is the highest lever, it's the strongest lever we have. So it's exactly that it's about changing that paradigm.

Colin Webster 27:57

So Pippa, I would say, that's exactly what we are trying to do in our work with EMF, right? We're trying to change paradigms change the way that people think about how the economy can operate. And I believe and I work in education, so I should believe this, that if we change the way that people think that will lead to change in the way that people act.

Pippa Shawley 28:20

I think that's quite common. And what I've really taken away from this, is that bigger picture, and changing the way we think rather than zooming in to the specifics, straightaway. Yeah.

Colin Webster 28:30

And I think that's for me, that's where the inspiration is in biomimicry, so is about a way of thinking, which can lead to some incredible, incredible systems that one can develop and the circular economy for me is one of them. at the product level, yes, you can, you can also create tremendous savings, and long term what we want to be looking at, of course, our nature inspired product innovations that fit within the circular economy perfectly.

Pippa Shawley 29:01

So it's going back to going back to the principles of a circular economy. It's thinking about the cycles regenerating nature, thinking about how we design things, where else does biomimicry fit in there?

Colin Webster 29:16

For I think you've covered it really well, is about that big picture. So I would say what what the biomimicry has given to the circular economy, is that systems perspective is that overall, the heuristic the way of understanding how living systems work, and applying that to our economy, both in terms of being able to tell good stories, which I think are crucial, and I think we've heard that a lot from Stefano here as well. But also in terms of flows, the sort of, for me this the circular economy is a biomimetic system, because as the final puts it, that is how nature works.

Pippa Shawley 29:53

And I think also, I mean, Chad talks about this a bit as well is the multidisciplinary side of things. So, working with the science test but the investors and maybe not necessarily trying to compete with people that are doing things in the old linear way but collaborating with them, which is I think it was defined. I said, that's how it happens in nature as well. Yeah.

Colin Webster 30:11

And to quote Janine Benyus, since we started there. She said, there should be a biologist at the design table. So that fits with that multidisciplinary way of doing things and, and I think that helps people to repeat the the theme here to think very desperately.

Pippa Shawley 30:26

I love the idea of a biologist at the table. If people want to find out more about biomimicry, where can they go? My

Colin Webster 30:33

first port of call would be the Biomimicry Institute. And you'll find them online quite easily. They've got a wonderful website, incidentally also called asked nature, where you can see well, how does how does nature adhere to surfaces whilst underwater and you'll hunt have lots of hits from that fact. That's where it helicoid came from originally. That is part of that asked nature database.

Pippa Shawley 30:54

So it's a bit like a magic eight ball. You can shake it and see what solutions go out.

Colin Webster 30:59

Yes, perfect. So if you've enjoyed this episode, thank you very much for listening. We are exploring the five schools of thought that inspired the circular economy. What's next, Pippa?

Pippa Shawley 31:10

Next up, it's Cradle to Cradle.

Colin Webster 31:13

Brilliant looking forward to that. So if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with the people who you think will be interested. And join us next week on the Circular Economy Show.