Before humans ever conceived of sustainable design, nature was doing a good job. Plants and animals have evolved to use energy efficiently, to be multi-functional yet balanced, and to use information to carry out living processes. With this in mind, the Biomimicry Institute challenges designers to mine nature for new ideas, as you can see from its 2016 Biomimicry Global Design Challenge. “Nature has done 3.8 billion years of R&D already, so looking at nature