D.

ScottHeemstra
May2016

BiologicalInspiration

The Earth Bin is a biomimicry design that will eliminate organic waste from school
lunches.Westartbysettingupcompostbinsaroundtheschool,wherestudentswilltossleftovers
from school lunches. Later, the contents of the binsareusedascompostinthegarden,enriching
the soil. Eventually, we would like some of the food grown in this soil to be used in school
lunches. The Earth Bin was inspired by how nature reduces organic waste. These include the
forestecosystem,ants,andtheactofdecompositioninnature(aka.composting).
The forest ecosystem inspired the Earth Bin with how it breaks down and decomposes
chemicals from organic waste to enrich the soil. The forest follows a system called the food
cycle. The food cycle is the process that food take between growth and waste. The final stepof
the food cycle in the forest is waste, this can be done is two ways.Organicwasteiseithereaten
by other animals or it is absorbed by the soil and decomposes. When this happens the nutrients
from the waste are now in the soil making it perfect for other plants to grow in. We are
mimicking this through our compost system by usingtheleftoverfoodfromthebinsascompost
in the garden. When organic food waste (greens) are mixed with their organic materials like
leaves or branches (browns). It will chemically break down in the act of composting. That is
what we plan to do with the food waste wegetfromtheschoolcafeteria.Thefreshcompostcan
beusedintheschoolgardentoproduceproducethatcanlaterbeusedasfoodforthelunches.
The Temnothorax Ants inspired the Earth Bin by how they distribute anddealwithfood
during shortages. What the Temnothorax ants doiseffectivelyusetheirresourcessothataslittle
aspossiblearewasted.Theydothisbydeliveringanddisposingresourcesinsmallportions.This
makes it so that alloftheirresourcesgetusedorupcycledbackintotheenvironment.TheEarth
Bin wanted to utilize the effectivity of the ants in dealing with and composting the waste. We
wanted to use the resources effectively, if we could not stop organic waste we could put the
waste back into the environment via composting. This would be the most effective way
upcycling the waste that we created. Using the ants no waste policy as a guideline we created
ourownnowastesystemwiththeearthbox.
In conclusion, the Earth Bin takes inspiration from many different parts of nature and
uses nature's timetested methods of reducing and upcycling waste to the best of its ability. It
completes the natural food cycle (forestecosystem),anditusesallofitsresourceseffectively.In
turn, the Earth Bin addresses a problem found in today's society and solves it usingbiomimicry
methods.Thisisoursolutiontotheproblemoffoodwaste.