The article is written on the topic of 'Biomimicry.' To put it simply, biomimicry is studying how animals do things and trying to mimic, or copy the way they do things ourself so that we an save energy and resources. Kupfer interviews Benyus on biomimicry, her book, and her website. She believes and studies various lifeforms to see how we can help lessen energy usage and harm to our planet. For example, she mentions a beetle in a desert that can raise and open its' wings to slowly collect the mist in the air, which eventually collects and forms a drop of water heavy enough so that it slides downwards from gravity into the beetles' mouth. With many various ways on how to save energy, we have already started implementing some of these ideas into our daily lives.
- Graduated from Rutgers University with degrees in writing and natural resource management in the early 1980's.
- Grew up and went to college in New Jersey.
- Founder of the Biomimicry Institute.
- The institute runs a website known as asknature.org
- Started having professors teaching non-biology majors about biology and educating children in grades K-12.
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A Question of Design - William McDonough & Michael Braungart
The passage begins by introducing one famous and poor design known as the 'Titanic.' It was a large vessell that polluted the air with smoke and left waste behind in the ocean. Overall, it had many poor design factors. The article goes on to talk about the Ford car and of how it went through various changes. Another topic the article touches up on is the Industrial Revolution and the changes it brought. Some positive social changes were medical care and education greatly improving. Of course, with positive changes also came negative changes. One case being how landfills began collecting too much once valuable waste. Products that were bidegradable, such as paper were now ruined too much to be recycled and reused. Thus, resources being wasted away.
- 'Cradle-to-Grave' suggests that many potentially useful materials that could be recycled were not and were instead thrown into a landfill, thus ruining it and wasting it.
- The Industrial Revolution brought positive and negative changes.
- In the article, it stated that "according to some accounts more than 90 percent of materials extracted to make durable goods in the United States became waste almost immediately. "
- To achieve the most successful universal design, they design for a worst case scenario.
Speculative Prehistory of Humanity - Buckminster Fuller
Fuller introduces his passage with the Gossamer Albatross, which was able to fly across the English Channel while being powered by humans. Fuller talks more n depth about how materials can be used to its' utmost potential or will be wasted away. Today in our society, we waste tons of potential energy and many of us ar eunder the influence that the Earth will simply absorb anything harmful and continue to grow and thrive just fine. One example that stuck out was that every day there is an average of 2 million automobiles that are stopped at a red light with their engines on of course. This is about equal to the energy of 200 million horses being wasted away. Sometimes we really do overlook things that are being wasted each day.
- Introduces his point of view and argument with the Gossamer Albatross because it was human powered, unlike many things we have today.
- We sometimes may not need to use all the materials that we currently do.
- The human powered plane and the communication satellite are only 2 examples of many that can be labeled as "greater performance with much less material."
- There are many more possible inventions that can be designed to avoid wasting unnecessary energy.
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