Episode 4 of Sustainability@work

This is only important if nature inspires you! In this podcast episode, we are talking about the challenges of building a factory or a corporate building in the modern world.

Today’s podcast guest at Sustainability@Work is Nicole Hagerman Miller, Managing Director at Biomimicry 3.8 for Project Positive.

With her, we will talk about the challenges of building a factory or a corporate building taking inspiration from the forest next door, and with the purpose of, not only doing less bad but doing good, just like nature does with its ecosystem services.

This is a good starting point. What are ecosystem services? From the Project Positive website here is an important definition. Healthy ecosystems produce ecosystem services—these are the benefits humans get for free (free!), that are essential to life—i.e. clean air, filtered water, healthy soils, pollination, etc. Buildings and cities can also contribute to ecosystem services, shifting human impact from negative to positive.

So, take this definition and mix it with these two amazing quotes by Janine Benjus (co-founder of Biomimicry 3.8).
“When a bird builds a nest in a tree, it takes care not to destroy the surrounding forest in the process”.
“When a city [or manufacturing site] is functionally indistinguishable from the forest or wildlands next door, we’ve reached true sustainability”

So this is the goal, take inspiration from the forest and wildlands nearby and reproduce their ecosystem services with our manufacturing site or our corporate building so that not only nature can improve, but also the wellbeing of employees.

But this is just one part of this episode. The rest, I leave it to you to discover, because behind this project are a group of companies dedicated to raising the bar on what acting sustainably means with science-based targets and actions that are generous to the ecosystems, employees, and communities in which they operate.

And this doesn’t stop at buildings but can be applied and is applied also to cities.
Hear us out in this episode!

Here some information about our guest:

Nicole Miller serves as the managing director of Biomimicry 3.8, a certified BCorp and social enterprise dedicated to helping change-makers create a more sustainable world by emulating nature’s designs and core principles.

As managing director, she also works closely with key strategic partners and clients to get biomimicry into the hands of the designers, innovators, and changemakers that shape our world. This has included work with Google, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Target, Interface, Estee Lauder and other leading Fortune 100 innovators and sustainability leaders.