BIOMIMETIC RE-DESIGN OF SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS. Incrementare la sostenibilità ambientale dei prodotti attraverso criteri biomimetici.

Within the scientific discipline of Design for Environmental Sustainability, the biomimetic approach in design culture is becoming increasingly popular. Biomimicry is the discipline that studies natural biological systems in order to emulate them in forms, processes and strategies useful for finding more sustainable solutions to human design problems. It has thus generated a ‘biomimetic promise’ in that it assumes that, by emulating the biological systems that nature has tested and optimised over time, solutions for the production of environmentally sustainable products can be transferred to design. However, a review of the scientific literature suggests that such environmental benefits have rarely been quantified. The research therefore aims to verify the real benefits that the biomimetic approach can offer, in terms of environmental sustainability, to the design of industrial products. Through a bio-inspired redesign of certified sustainable products and their subsequent evaluation and comparison, made possible by the standardised Life Cycle Assessment methodology, the research intends to quantify the potential offered by bio-inspiration for the development of industrial products. The collection and analysis of environmentally certified products guided the research to select the Sebach TopSan NoTouch 2.0 portable toilet as a case study. Thanks to the active collaboration of the company that provided the necessary material, the elaboration of technical analyses and analysis of environmental impacts through the LCA methodology allowed the identification of re-design objectives. These allowed the start of the biomimetic redesign phase of some product components, transferring solutions offered by nature to the project. Finally, the comparative analysis of the life-cycle environmental impacts between the current product and its bio-inspired re-design provided useful results for the initiation of a discussion on the potential and limits of Biomimicry in design culture.