by Janine Benyus (Harper Perennial, 2002)

With her earlier book Biomimicry, Janine Benyus was the first to propose that learning from nature would be the perfect tool for ecodesign. After all, what is ecologically sustainable design but design in accordance with the natural world?

As she puts it, ï¿œThe core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. This is the real news of biomimicry: After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival.ï¿œ