Ajayi Tolulase Olufunmilayo
University of Lagos Faculty of Engineering, Nigeria.
Heliyon. 2023 May 10;9(5):e16180. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e16180. eCollection 2023 May.
Population growth inevitably gives rise to an increase in consumption of products and services. This has the domino effect of more exploitation of already scarce natural resources, with its concomitant pollution from the industries that process these natural resources into products and services for man. At the end of life of these products, they are disposed of as waste to landfills. All these issues threaten the sustainable development of any society. To proffer sustainable solutions to the environmental problems associated with the process industry, it has incorporated the concepts of process intensification via modularization, lean manufacturing, and industrial ecology into its operations. These same concepts are used by nature, though in a different way. As nature has survived for billions of years, looking to nature for inspiration - biomimicry, might be the only sustainable solution to the planet's problem. This paper, reviews nature's strategies that have been tested, and are relevant to the process industry. It highlights biomimicry as a powerful tool for achieving sustainability in the people-process-planet relationship as it assists to reduce waste, increase process efficiency and reduce reliance on scarce natural resources. As the process industry seeks to reduce its negative impact on the planet, biomimicry offers a promising approach to creating a more sustainable future.
人口增长不可避免地导致产品和服务消费的增加。这产生了多米诺效应，即对本已稀缺的自然资源进行更多的开发，同时伴随着将这些自然资源加工成供人类使用的产品和服务的工业所带来的污染。在这些产品的使用寿命结束时，它们作为废物被丢弃到垃圾填埋场。所有这些问题都威胁着任何社会的可持续发展。为了为与加工行业相关的环境问题提供可持续的解决方案，该行业已将通过模块化、精益制造和工业生态实现过程强化的概念纳入其运营之中。大自然也运用了这些相同的概念，不过方式有所不同。由于大自然已经存续了数十亿年，向大自然寻求灵感——仿生学，可能是解决地球问题的唯一可持续解决方案。本文回顾了已经得到验证且与加工行业相关的大自然的策略。它强调仿生学是在人-过程-地球关系中实现可持续性的有力工具，因为它有助于减少浪费、提高过程效率并减少对稀缺自然资源的依赖。随着加工行业寻求减少其对地球的负面影响，仿生学为创造更可持续的未来提供了一种有前景的方法。
