I’ve recently been inspired by the work of Janine Benyus who implores us to learn from the natural world instead of just learning about the natural world. Benyus promotes imitating the awesome design principles found in nature. Check out this rich resource: https://asknature.org/

Life gives information to matter to create efficient and effective structures to meet functional needs and attributes. And these natural designs create conditions advantageous to life unlike many short sighted human attempts to solve problems. Benyus points out that humans use many chemicals that are dangerous to life, while nature uses very select portions of the periodic table.

“How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Benyus describes human attempts at designing as heat, beat and treat. While nature offers design and material innovations that are simple, elegant and quite efficient.

“I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially. E. B. WHITE”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

On the ask nature website, categories to consider are: make or break down; move or stay; protect; process information; get, store or distribute resources; or maintain community and system integrity.  

“As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no "high-minded orientation," no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Life on earth presents elegant solutions to many of the challenges that designers and innovators face every day. Why not learn from organisms that have made successful adaptations to changing environments for millennia. And the changes they made actually worked to ensure success of future generations unlike the short-term solutions provided by the petrochemical industry.

 “A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

https://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tedspread&fbclid=IwAR2zGEmsTubYyFrY_jKZNKPsHH-YAdnrspc2TpomgBi-eI0PLDE_OBoD3rw

https://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_s_surprising_lessons_from_nature_s_engineers