Janine Benyus Quotes

#1. Hospital-acquired infections are now killing more people every year in the United States than die from AIDS or cancer or car accidents combined - about 100,000.

Janine Benyus

#2. The most irrevocable of [natures] laws says that a species cannot occupy a niche that appropriates all resources
there has to be some sharing. Any species that ignores this law winds up destroying its community to support its own expansion.

Janine Benyus

#3. There are three types of biomimicry - one is copying form and shape, another is copying a process, like photosynthesis in a leaf, and the third is mimicking at an ecosystem's level, like building a nature-inspired city.

Janine Benyus

#4. The truth is, natural organisms have managed to do everything we want to do without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet or mortgaging the future.

Janine Benyus

#5. When the forest and the city are functionally indistinguishable, then we know we have reached sustainability.

Janine Benyus

#6. Listening to nature's operating instructions.

Janine Benyus

#7. What if, every time I started to invent something, I asked, 'How would nature solve this?'

Janine Benyus

#8. Life creates conditions conducive to life.

Janine Benyus

#9. Life doesn't use detergent to clean itself.

Janine Benyus

#10. Conserving habitats is a wellspring for the next industrial revolution.

Janine Benyus

#11. Cooperation in the most natural thing in the world

Janine Benyus

#12. Virtually all native cultures that have survived without fouling their nests have acknowledged that nature knows best, and have had the humility to ask the bears and wolves and ravens and redwoods for guidance.

Janine Benyus

#13. Organisms sip energy, because they have to work or barter for every single bit that they get.

Janine Benyus

#14. We're basically this very young species, only 200,000 years old. We're one of the newcomers, and we're going through the same process that other species go through, which is, how do I keep myself alive while taking care of the place that's going to keep my offspring alive?

Janine Benyus

#15. There are literally as many ideas as there are organisms.

Janine Benyus

#16. Biological knowledge is doubling every five years.

Janine Benyus

#17. Per capita, I would say that Australia has more biomimetic projects going than many other countries I've been to.

Janine Benyus

#18. Organisms don't think of CO2 as a poison. Plants and organisms that make shells, coral, think of it as a building block.

Janine Benyus

#19. Everyone is trying to jump on the biomimic bandwagon. But a cork floor is not biomimicry. Neither is using bacteria to clean water.

Janine Benyus

#20. In reality, we haven't escaped the gravity of life at all. We are still beholden to ecological laws, the same as any other life-form.

Janine Benyus

#21. Water is at the center of every chemical reaction, and therefore should be the earth's most precious gift.

Janine Benyus

#22. The answers to our questions are everywhere; we just need to change the lens with which we see the world.

Janine Benyus

#23. Nature works with five polymers. Only five polymers. In the natural world, life builds from the bottom up, and it builds in resilience and multiple uses.

Janine Benyus

#24. For businesses, biomimicry is about bringing a new discipline - biology - to the design table. It's not to write an environmental impact statement, as most biologists in business do right now.

Janine Benyus

#25. Biomimicry is ... the conscious emulation of life's genius.

Janine Benyus

#26. The real survivors are the Earth inhabitants that have lived millions of years without consuming their ecological capital, the base from which all abundance flows.

Janine Benyus

#27. Life solves its problems with well-adapted designs, life-friendly chemistry and smart material and energy use.

Janine Benyus

#28. After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to our survival.

Janine M. Benyus

#29. Biomimicry is basically taking a design challenge and then finding an ecosystem that's already solved that challenge, and literally trying to emulate what you learn.

Janine Benyus

#30. Glue actually contaminates recyclables. We throw things in a landfill just because they're glued together.

Janine Benyus

#31. The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone.

Janine Benyus

#32. Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination

Janine Benyus

#33. If we are to use our tools in the service of fitting in on Earth, our basic relationship to nature
even the story we tell ourselves about who we are in the universe
has to change.

Janine Benyus

#34. Trees and bones are constantly reforming themselves along lines of stress. This algorithm has been put into a software program that's now being used to make bridges lightweight, to make building beams lightweight.

Janine Benyus

#35. The answers to how to live sustainably on our planet are all around us.

Janine Benyus

#36. Green chemistry is replacing our industrial chemistry with nature's recipe book. It's not easy, because life uses only a subset of the elements in the periodic table. And we use all of them, even the toxic ones.

Janine Benyus

#37. Biologically inspired materials could revolutionize materials science. People looking at spider silk and abalone shells are looking for new ways to make materials better, cheaper, and with less toxic byproducts.

Janine Benyus