Biomimicry Institute Blog: 10 Finalist Teams Use Nature's Lessons to Create Climate Change Solutions

Páramo is an alpine tundra ecosystem exclusively located in the Northern Andes of South America and the home to the bryophytes that a team from Bogota, Colombia were inspired by in developing their concept, Bryosoil. Bryosoil is a flood prevention system that took the first place prize for student teams in the 2019 Biomimicry Global Design Challenge. As the effects of climate change continue to be exacerbated and sea levels continue to rise, many communities worldwide are now dealing with worsening flood situations. Four of the finalist teams in this year’s Challenge address flooding, including team Limonene Pods. This team focused on the issue of debris flow that occurs during fire and flood cycles in their home state of California.

In addition to flooding, the finalist teams addressed plastic pollution in rivers that eventually finds its way into the oceans and the reduction of food waste in the majority world. Both plastic pollution in oceans and the reduction of food waste were two optional prompts that the Biomimicry Institute newly created this year to guide the process of selecting meaningful focus areas related to the overall Challenge theme of climate change.   The Biomimicry Global Design Challenge is an annual competition in its 5th year that invites innovators to learn how to use biomimicry—the process of looking to nature for design inspiration—to develop solutions to climate change. This year, nearly 100 teams from 17 countries entered the Challenge with hopes of becoming a finalist and being invited to join the 2019-2020 Biomimicry Launchpad, a program that supports prototyping, a path toward commercialization, and the potential to win the $100,000 Ray C. Anderson Foundation Ray of Hope Prize®.

Continue reading to learn about this year’s ten finalists, including the top three student teams and honorable mentions.