MARK TWAIN FAMOUSLY said that golf is a good walk spoiled. But maybe business golfers have been onto something all along. Think of all those deals arranged on the greens.
Politicians and other movers and shakers have long been known to gather at confabs under trees and stars to exchange ideas and plan campaigns. Camp David, the retreat of presidents, comes to mind. Writers and artists retreats allow people time away from the familiar, time to breathe and think. The same is true for business retreats.
The company Airbus now uses wilderness retreats as a reflective catalyst for leadership training, while other companies sponsor weekend hiking excursions, scheduling time for discussion about new business opportunities or for brainstorming about products. Nature-smart retreats don’t have to take place in remote, immersive locations. A hike in a nearby park for a product development team can be stress-reducing and brain-stimulating.
The green architect Gail Lindsey, whom we met previously, saw an opportunity at the intersection between business, personal growth, and the outdoors. She and three colleagues created Adult Summer Camp as an antidote to nature-deficit disorder. “We set up an early September week in the Adirondacks,” Lindsey told me. “We brainstormed during the mornings and enjoyed time in nature in the afternoon. We found that the canoeing, hiking, just being with nature was magical. New ideas bubbled up each morning and by the end of the week we knew that several breakthroughs were the direct result of the outdoor experience that allowed our childlike awe, openness, and creativity to flourish.”
Today, these weeklong Adult Summer Camps are held at locations around the United States. Lindsey’s idea not only represented a nature-smart business venture, but has applications for the business world.
Taking businesspeople outdoors can produce more than new marketing ideas. Mark Boulet and Anna Clabburn, in a report for Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, make the case that nature retreats also can help companies ask such questions as: “How can meaningful concern for environmental and social sustainability be embodied?” The authors examine the outdoor experiences of Romantic period painters and Australian Aboriginal nature retreats, and conclude that “the act of placing oneself in the wild and of tuning into the intricate texture and dynamism of the natural environment is a vital step towards awakening a sense of ‘ecological’ self.” The nature retreat “is perhaps one of the most effective ways of alerting human beings to their intimate relationship with (and co-dependence on) the rest of the organic world.”1
Okay, use such language around most businesspeople and they’ll start looking at their watches. Still, there’s opportunity here, in the workplace and beyond. New markets will emerge, and some of the early customers will be corporate.
One of the most direct applications of the Nature Principle for business is through the creation of the “high-performance” workplace, as some architects and designers call office buildings that go beyond traditional green design to incorporate the benefits of more natural environments, including views of nature.
Today, most office buildings or workplaces are far from restorative. Stephen Kellert, a social ecology professor at Yale University and one of the leading authorities on biophilic design and environmental conservation, has served as an adviser on the development of such projects as the Bank of America’s office tower at One Bryant Park in New York. As Kellert points out: “Some of our most alienating work environments, in the sense of separating us from nature, are often in the modern office building, where people are in these very bland, hostile environments with no access to windows or any experience of the outside or natural environments. Ironically, if you tried to do that to a caged animal in a zoo, you would violate legal statute, and would be prevented from doing so. . . . We don’t see ourselves like that tiger in the cage, that we’re just as much dependent upon those experiential connections as the tiger is.”2
Many cubicle-bound workers would beg to differ; they do see themselves caged. Naturalizing the workplace may be part of the solution. Vivian Loftness, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture, refers to restorative buildings and points to potential reductions in lost work time, absenteeism, and turnover rate. “Retention of workers is the real sleeper,” she says. “It costs an employer about $25,000 every time a valued employee leaves.”3
Of course, that amount depends on the employee’s position and the job market’s condition, but the point is taken. For the millions of employees who work in cubicles, their productivity, health, and happiness could be dramatically improved by incorporating natural elements, according to psychologist Judith Heerwagen, whose clients include the U.S. Department of Energy and Boeing. The new rules of the restorative workplace parallel the rules for the restorative home. Employees who sit next to windows are more productive and exhibit consistently fewer symptoms of “sick building syndrome” than other workers; at one organization, absenteeism quadrupled after a move from a building with natural ventilation to one with sealed windows and central air.4 Studies of such restorative workplaces show improved product quality, customer satisfaction, and innovation. Successful models are emerging, including the 295,000-square-foot Herman Miller headquarters building in Zeeland, Michigan, designed for abundant natural light, indoor plants, and outdoor views, including views of a restored wetlands and prairie on company grounds. After moving into the building, 75 percent of day-shift office workers said they considered the building healthier and 38 percent said their job satisfaction had improved. Another positive example is the fifty-three-story Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt, Germany, which contains indoor gardens on every thirteenth floor. The conservation of energy and the production of human energy can go hand in hand. In San Bruno, California, the new Gap Inc. office has a green roof of native grasses and wildflowers, which reduces sound transmission by up to fifty decibels and provides an acoustic barrier to nearby air traffic—and the stress associated with that noise. The remodeled California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco offers a glass pavilion, an undulating roof that simulates sand dunes, and a green roof with nearly two million native plants and habitat for several endangered species. At the new University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, a four-story “living wall” of orchids, ferns, ivy, and hibiscus serves as a super biofilter, using microbe action to break down hundreds of contaminants found in indoor air.
In 2003, designer Mick Pearce was awarded the international Prince Claus Award for the design of an office complex and shopping mall in Zimbabwe, which is ventilated, cooled, and heated entirely through natural means. This approach, inspired by termite mounds (more about that later) not only saves energy, but is more comfortable than the typical sealed and air-conditioned office. Such nature-friendly offices not only encourage more productive workers, but also result in more direct economic benefits. At the office complex and mall in Zimbabwe, ventilation reportedly costs one-tenth that of comparable air-conditioned structures; the complex uses 35 percent less energy than six conventional buildings combined, which saved the owner $3.5 million in energy costs in the first five years alone.
In Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, Paul Hawken describes how a Lockheed building in Sunnyvale, California, reduced its lighting bill by three-fourths through better use of natural light. That also resulted in a 15 percent reduction in absenteeism and increased productivity. “Moreover, the lower overhead gave the company the edge in a tough contract competition, and the profits from that unexpected contract earned Lockheed more than it had paid for the whole building,” according to Hawken. He also offers an intriguing explanation of a variant of the restorative approach: “The typical Western mechanical engineer strives to eliminate variability in human-made environments with thermostats and humidistats and photosensors. . . . But some Japanese designers use computer technology to replicate a more natural environment, subtly delivering air in seemingly random gusts. They may even inject subliminal whiffs of jasmine or sandalwood scent into the ventilation system to stimulate the senses.”5
Some companies are actively promoting on-site gardens to beef up morale as more traditional benefits evaporate. In the New York Times, Kim Severson writes about employees at PepsiCo headquarters in New York raising carrots and squash on company plots, tending plants during lunch or other breaks. They’re not alone. There also are organic gardens in plots or raised planting beds in buildings owned by Google, Yahoo, and Sunset magazine, spaces that might otherwise have been allotted to standard trimmed lawn and shrubs, or assigned as designated smoking areas. “At Aveda, which offers on-site massage and organic cafeteria food at its headquarters near Minneapolis, the garden is a chance for its seven hundred employees to take a break from their desks and take home fresh produce. Workers pay ten dollars for the season and, in return, they get a share of the bounty. Picking up a hoe is optional, but encouraged,” Severson writes. “In many cases, employee groups asked for the gardens. Sometimes, managers suggested them to help supply a food bank or as a team-building activity. It turns out that building tomato trellises together can help erase office hierarchies.”6
The man who gave us the biophilia hypothesis may have best captured the spirit of the restorative office building. In a PBS interview on Nova, while commenting on nature-deficit disorder, E. O. Wilson said: “A lot of architects are saying this is the next big thing.” He mused: maybe we’ve had enough with “buildings and monuments to ourselves . . . gigantic phalli, huge arches, forbidding terraces and walkways . . . neo-Soviet buildings. . . . How great we are! But maybe what we really need down deep is to get closer to where we came from.” Naturalizing our workplaces isn’t a step back toward the primitive, he added, but rather a way to feel better. He described visiting an office building in North Carolina, which was designed biophilically: “[The designer] had to cut some trees, but he left the rest on this little knoll overlooking a stream. And you sit there with a glassed-in wall endlessly looking out, while chipmunks and warblers and so on are all over the place and the stream is flowing by. And you’re at peace.”7
Some office workers take nature into their own hands by wildscaping their offices. That’s what Nancy Herron has done. Herron manages nature and fishing education programs for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “Oddly, our office is a typical prairie-dog town of antiproductivity pods with heads popping over dividers,” she says. Herron surrounds her office space with plants to soften the edges and “give my brain some separation from goings-on next door.” She and several office mates even planted a wildscape of native plants in front of the building. People sit out there now to talk. She takes her staff to the state park adjacent to the building. “Outside, our creative juices start flowing. We solve problems, we volunteer for solutions, we are no longer in the box. We can talk openly, honestly; we’re in an open environment, literally.”
Where once the dominant business ethic was to make buildings and products bigger, today the rules of design for electronic gadgets include: make it smaller; make it smarter; make it indispensable; make it usable everywhere; make it prematurely obsolete. At least for those first two goals, E. F. Schumacher, the author of Small Is Beautiful, would have nodded his head in agreement.
The Nature Principle offers its own set of design rules: use natural systems to enhance human beings’ physical, psychological, and spiritual life; preserve or plant nature everywhere; rather than plan for obsolescence, plan for long-term organic growth. (Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture, drove some of his patrons to distraction. In their initial form, his parks often looked stunted and spare, and that was because he designed parks to reach their mature beauty decades into the future; he planned for growth.) The current central theory of technology is efficiency, but the guiding theory of a human/nature reunion is restoration of body, mind, spirit.
Whereas technology immersion results in walls that become screens, and machines that enter our bodies, more nature in our lives offers us homes and workplaces and natural communities that produce human energy. A related concept is universal design, which recognizes that human physical abilities range over a wide spectrum. Universal design erases the notion of “design for the disabled”—because all of us eventually face such obstacles and opportunities —and instead produces products and environments that make life more comfortable for people as they move through life.
As our society ages, disabilities will become more common, posing a growing barrier between older people and the outdoors. Does this mean that more hiking trails should be paved and ski runs railed? That’s one approach. Other solutions are available. Peter Axelson, who became a paraplegic after a rock-climbing accident, designed the “sit ski,” which today allows many disabled people to enjoy skiing and enabled him to become a world champion mono-skier. His Nevada-based company is developing technologies to help people with disabilities engage with nature, including off-road wheelchairs, walkers, and power scooters. The notion of nature-assisted aging, discussed earlier, also presents opportunities for designers of residential developments, assisted-living centers, and nursing homes, as well as for gerontologists, physical therapists, and other health providers. As a philosophy, universal design acknowledges that the best design encompasses the full human community.
An extended universal design philosophy would further broaden the concept of community, suggesting that the design of human products and environment should be about not just the effect on the individual human, but also the effect on other species, and could even incorporate things we have learned from observing other species. Such design takes into consideration all members —thus, the emergence of what might be called universe design.
Biomimicry, also called “respectful imitation,” is a growing industrial field. Janine Benyus, a natural sciences writer and president of the nonprofit Biomimicry Institute, has written a half-dozen books on the subject. Among her honors is the 2009 Champion of the Earth award in Science and Innovation from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).8 Her 1997 book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, brought wide attention to the field. Benyus argues that all human inventions have already appeared in nature, in more elegant form and at less cost to the environment: “Our most stealthy radar is hard of hearing compared to the bat’s multifrequency transmission: Bioluminescent algae splash chemicals together to light their body lanterns. Arctic fish and frogs freeze solid and then spring to life, having protected their organs from ice damage. [Polar bears] stay active, with a coat of transparent hollow hairs covering their skins like the panes of a greenhouse. . . . The inner shell of a sea creature called an abalone is twice as tough as our high-tech ceramics. Spider silk, ounce for ounce, is five times as strong as steel. . . . Rhino horn manages to repair itself though it has no living cells.” In terms of design, nature rejects what humans usually consider “limits,” says Benyus.
While “the conscious emulation of life’s genius,” can be weaponized and abused, and become destructive to nature itself, the basic idea behind biomimicry is derived from awe and respect for the natural world. Biomimicry encompasses the view that nature is not an enemy to be vanquished, but our design partner; not the problem, but the solution.
For example, engineers from the car manufacturer Nissan, citing research into how fish move in schools, have announced their intention “to improve migration efficiency of a group of vehicles and contribute to an environmentally friendly and traffic jam - free driving environment.” Nissan’s experimental Episode Zero Robot, or EPORO, uses laser sensors, which may someday have practical use in a “Safety Shield” accident-avoidance system installed in cars.9 The Shinkansen Bullet Train of the West Japan Railway Company travels two hundred miles per hour but, in the beginning, air pressure changes produced thunderclaps when the train emerged from a tunnel. Eiji Nakatsu, the train’s chief engineer, who also happened to be a birder, recommended remodeling the front end of the train in the shape of a kingfisher’s beak, resulting not only in a quieter train but also in a 15 percent reduction in the train’s electricity use and a 10 percent increase in speed.10
As Michael Silverberg writes in the New York Times Magazine, various treelike contraptions are on the drawing board.11 One product would target carbon —“100,000 such trees could mop up half the United Kingdom’s carbon emissions” —and another would capture energy from sun and wind through “leaflike modules” that could be attached to a building. As the many leaves move in the wind, miniature generators would each produce tiny amounts of electricity. (Still, more real forests would do the job better and at less expense.)
Remember the award-winning office complex and shopping mall inspired by termite mounds? The designer recognized the genius of certain African and Australian termite species that create mounds taller than human beings, with special rooms for gardens and water collection, and a mysterious form of air-conditioning. Writing in Natural History, J. Scott Turner, a biology professor at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, describes the process: “By building the mound upward into the stiffer breezes higher off the ground, the termites harness the wind to drive air movements in the mound’s tunnels. The flow of the wind pushes air through the porous soil on the windward side and sucks it out on the leeward side, allowing the nest atmosphere to mix with fresh air from the outside world. . . . What is remarkable is the pattern of ventilation, an in-and-out movement very similar to the way air flows into and out of our own lungs.”12 To the designer, the mounds raise the question of where “animate” ends and “inanimate” begins.
When businesses engage nature as a partner, the benefits do not stop at the workplace, or with employee retreats, or even design, but extend directly to the marketplace, the service economy, and retail trade, which can in turn reshape cities and commercial areas. Kathleen L. Wolf, projects director at the College of the Environment, University of Washington, investigates how natural environments in an urban setting—that is, trees and other plants—influence the behavior and perceptions of shoppers and others.13 She reviewed research on the role of trees in several large cities, including Austin, Seattle, and Washington DC, and found plantings attract consumers and tourists in business districts. The report, “Trees Mean Business,” states: “Across all studies, consumer ratings increased steadily with the presence of trees. Visual preference scores were lower for places without trees and much higher for places with trees. . . . Images of business district settings with tidy sidewalks and quality buildings, but no trees, were at the low end of the scores, while the images of districts with well-tended large trees received the highest preference ratings, particularly when large trees formed a canopy over the sidewalk and street.” And retailers take note: “Respondents were presented with a list of goods and services and asked to state prices for each. Price response varied somewhat between different-sized cities, yet trees were consistently associated with higher price points. Consumers claimed they were willing to pay 9 percent more in small cities and 12 percent more in large cities for equivalent goods and services in business districts having trees.”14
The proof will be in the purchases. If future neighborhood shopping areas are immersed in nature, will people really avoid the big-box stores? Probably not. Price still rules. (Green roofs or solar farms on the big boxes would help.) But all things being equal, when the public is given a choice between a generic, marginal strip mall and a pleasant, tree-lined shopping area, the smart money would be on the trees.
One of the clichés about business and nature is that there’s no profit to be made. Not true. Putting the Nature Principle to work for business isn’t only a matter of workplace or commercial design, but of new products, too. Many people believe that technology is the antithesis of nature. Understandable. But here’s an alternative view: A fishing rod is technology. So is that fancy backpack. Or a compass. Or a tent. When boomers my age ran through the woods with play guns, they were using technology as an entry tool to nature. Today, the family that goes geocaching or wildlife photographing with their digital cameras, or collecting pond samples, is doing something as legitimate as backpacking; these gadgets offer an excuse to get outside. The attitude of young citizen naturalists toward technology is bound to be different from that of many older people —and that could be an advantage.
Not long ago, I received a note from Jim Levine, who happens to be my literary agent, and who also has written several books about fatherhood and family life. He and his wife, Joan, were staying at their getaway cabin in Massachusetts. Jim was on his way out the door to take their four-year-old grandson, Elijah, on a walk through a nature preserve and to gather pond samples “to look at under the very cool microscope I got him,” Jim wrote. Jim, who is a bit too attached to his own smartphone, was excited about the microscope: “It hooks up to my computer (desktop or laptop) and lets us both see the images on screen and record them as still photos or as movies. So from our last outing, I have pix of the outing, pix of him setting up the microscope, and then a video of what he actually saw —paramecium and all—when he looked through. Elijah just got done explaining to Joan that we won’t necessarily retrieve a paramecium in our sample! At age 4!” And Jim and Joan—as grandparents—were connecting to nature, too.
Personally, I’m not keen on the kind of gadgets that go over the line—to the point where we become more aware of the gadget than of nature (iPod-guided tours of natural areas, for example). But technonaturalists are here to stay. Of course, any gadget can distract from nature. People can become so transfixed by the camera screen that they never look past it to see the stream. In the same way, some fishermen are so intent on their gear, or on winning the tournament trophy, that they miss much of the environment around them, except for the rod, the reel, the feel of monofilament. The worth of any nature-oriented getaway gadget should be related to how long it takes the person to put down the gadget. Hopefully, they’ll still want to look around and use their unaided eyes and all the other senses.
“How do we create experiences for people, particularly in cities, that foster awareness of the natural world?” asks Janis Dickinson, director of Citizen Science at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which offers the Celebrate Urban Birds project. “It is possible, even likely, that a new generation of technonaturalists will document their outdoor experiences not with paper and pen but with electronic data, digital images, and video, creating new communities of action and meaning. Celebrate Urban Birds is exploring these ideas while remaining grounded in the real world. It is our overriding belief that spending real time in real nature, with its rhythms, sights, smells, and sounds, may be facilitated with technology but cannot be fabricated!”
We live in a goal-oriented society, and most people need some goal in mind when entering the natural world, whether it’s to live out a fantasy or to hunt and gather. Shouldering that toy gun as a ten-year-old and heading for the woods was one way to enter nature. I have an imaginary new “toy” in mind, one that kids and adults might enjoy. Is it a pretend gun? Or a long-lens camera? Take your pick; the device could visually be mistaken for either. (Most of us who raised boys have realized that, even when toy guns are discouraged, children will often turn sticks into guns. So let’s offer something new to express that hunter-gatherer instinct.) Boys, girls, adults (think paintball) could take this gadget on explorations in nature. Within this device would be a digital camera, a microphone, and a wireless phone connection. Point this device at a bird and click, and the image is immediately sent to your own Web-based life list, and to a Web site that maps and tracks species migrations and sightings. Using image and sound recognition, the bird would be identified and registered, thus aiding scientists and citizen naturalists working to understand migration patterns and population distribution. In fact, something like this service already exists for iPhone users—and by the time you read this entry, some more sophisticated version may be available. In this way, play becomes purposeful and participatory science. A related business idea emerged in 2010: a $1,200 digital scope that hunters can use for deer hunting—without actually shooting the deer. The scope includes a memory card that stores 10-second video clips recording accurate “shots.” The plan is for the scope to be used in competitions broadcast by the Outdoor Channel.
Enthusiasm for such products is a matter of personal taste, but they do get people outdoors. When I asked some of my colleagues and friends for suggestions for other imaginary or existing products and services that could connect people of all ages to nature, they offered dozens of suggestions for entrepreneurs, with a certain thematic crossover between the sustainable and the restorative.
Ideas for new product lines, or ones that exist but could be marketed more widely to people of all ages, include: wildscape kits with guides, seeds and plants to naturalize your backyard (with coupons to local native-plant nurseries); nature tourism and walking guides (and smart-phone apps); night cameras and video traps to “catch” seldom-seen animals in nearby nature. (San Diego Zoo conservationist Ron Swaisgood says, “Prices are falling and quality is improving. Purchase one, mount it to a tree in your local canyon and see what’s going on. Upload the video to your Facebook page.”)
Among the services: roof gardeners for hire; indoor fish-farm installers; forest kindergartens, where the kids learn outside all day; raising mushrooms to be used as packing material (this idea started as a classroom project and has grown into a full-scale business); roof painters who paint your roof white in summer months for heat reflection and black in the colder months for heat absorption; mobile bike tune-up guy and bike taxi services. My friend Jon Wurtmann suggests this novel idea: “People Walker. We have dog walkers—why not a service that takes your kids, your aging parents, the infirm, and walks them at their pace through a safe park, local trails . . .”
A third category: business-building restorative services, including business-sponsored annual competitions in birding, hiking, and other outdoor activities. Nancy Herron of Texas Parks and Wildlife reports: “We have an annual competition with business-sponsored teams who compete for how many different species of birds they see or hear over a week’s time and the winning team’s prize is selecting a conservation project to receive funding.”
Once the entrepreneurial spirit kicks in, it’s easy to start thinking of products and services. Some of these may not be your cup of organic tea —and yes, there’s a certain contradiction between preserving nature and consumer products, but let’s give ourselves a break. Would we rather that the commercial world emphasize everything but a connection to the natural world?
Business can, with nature as partner, become more productive and profitable; in fact, a nature-smart business has certain natural advantages over companies that continue to destroy the human connection to nature. Those advantages are sustainable only within a larger moral and societal context, suggesting this rule: If a business with nature adds more to the natural world than it subtracts, if it strengthens human care for nature, while enhancing human intelligence, health, and well-being, then that relationship—that business—is not only moral, but truly nature smart.