REFLECTIVE JOURNAL SESSION 10

Pre-workshop

Johan Rockström addresses the urgent need to reassess our impact on the planet and the necessity for a significant shift in how we approach sustainability. He highlights that humans are now the largest force of change on Earth, impacting the thin layer of the atmosphere that supports life. This impact is exemplified by the exponential rise in pressures such as global warming and ecosystem degradation, leading to the destabilization of the planet. Rockström emphasizes the unprecedented changes in the last 50 years, which have significantly altered the Earth's conditions that had remained stable for the previous 10,000 years.

Key points include:

1. Human Impact and Climate Change: The last few years have been the warmest on record, with human activities significantly contributing to this warming, leading to extreme weather events and ecosystem collapse.

2. The Anthropocene Era: Humanity has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, characterized by humans being the dominant force shaping the planet's environment.

3. Planetary Boundaries: Rockström outlines nine critical systems that regulate the state of the planet, including climate, oceans, and biodiversity. Four of these boundaries have already been transgressed, indicating a dangerous trajectory.

4. Tipping Points and Nonlinear Changes: The planet's systems can reach tipping points where small changes can lead to irreversible and significant transformations, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the collapse of coral reefs.

5. The Need for Systemic Change: Addressing these challenges requires moving beyond incremental changes to transformative actions, integrating environmental sustainability with social and economic development.

Rockström also addresses the role of innovation and technology in achieving sustainability, emphasizing the need for disruptive changes and the importance of political leadership and societal pressure in driving these transformations. He calls for a redefinition of sustainable development to include prosperity and equity within planetary boundaries and highlights the importance of aligning economic activities with environmental limits.

Post workshop

Creating a Bio-Industrial Revolution

The speaker, Janine Benyus, discusses an impending evolutionary leap in how we manufacture goods, likening it to a new Industrial Revolution. This new era of manufacturing will see production coming into cities, neighborhoods, and even homes, enabled by advances like 3D printing. Benyus raises a critical question: will this new revolution be more environmentally benign and biologically compatible than the last?

She advocates for using biological wisdom to guide this transformation, emphasizing that nature has been manufacturing sustainably for billions of years. Unlike traditional industrial processes that create waste and pollution, nature’s processes are silent, efficient, and cyclical, with materials continually reused in a closed-loop system.

Key points include:

1. Biological Manufacturing: Nature's manufacturing processes are efficient, waste-free, and safe. Benyus highlights how trees and other natural systems build to shape without waste and use safe, local materials.

2. Life-Friendly Chemistry: Traditional manufacturing relies on high heat, pressure, and toxic chemicals, whereas nature uses life-friendly chemistry and safe materials.

3. Additive Manufacturing: Nature builds by adding material rather than subtracting it, leading to less waste. This concept is now being mirrored in technologies like 3D printing.

4. Carbon Dioxide as a Resource: Innovative companies are turning excess CO2 into useful materials, inspired by how plants use CO2.

5. Recycling and Degradation: Nature excels at recycling materials through processes like decomposition, and new technologies are mimicking these processes to create biodegradable and recyclable products.

6. Design Inspired by Nature: Using biomimicry, designers can create products that are efficient, sustainable, and multifunctional, like nature’s own designs.

Benyus emphasizes that this new revolution should integrate biological principles into every stage of manufacturing, from supply chain to product design and recycling. She calls for the creation of a biological intelligence service to provide nature-inspired solutions to designers and engineers, ensuring that future manufacturing processes are sustainable and life-friendly.

She concludes with a powerful message: this is our revolution, and we have the opportunity to make it different from past industrial revolutions. By learning from and emulating nature, we can create a sustainable future that ensures our continued thriving on this planet, alongside the myriad other species with which we share it.

3D printing with bacteria-loaded ink produces bone-like composites

Researchers at the Soft Materials Laboratory in the School of Engineering have developed a 3D printable ink called BactoInk that incorporates the bacterium Sporosarcina pasteurii. This bacterium initiates a mineralization process when exposed to a urea-containing solution, resulting in the formation of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). The ink can be used to 3D-print various shapes, which mineralize over a few days to become strong and resilient bio-composites.

The innovation addresses the limitations of traditional 3D printing inks, which often result in soft, shrinking, or cracked structures. Instead of printing minerals directly, the researchers print a polymeric scaffold with BactoInk, which then undergoes mineralization to achieve over 90% mineral content.

The resulting bio-composite can be produced using standard 3D printers and natural materials without extreme temperatures. The final product does not contain living bacteria, as it is treated with ethanol post-mineralization.

This method has potential applications in art restoration, ecological conservation, and biomedicine. BactoInk's mechanical properties make it suitable for repairing artworks, building artificial corals for reef regeneration, and potentially for biomedical uses due to its bone-like structure.

The research has been published in the journal Materials Today, highlighting the environmental benefits and mechanical excellence of the mineralized materials produced with BactoInk.