Finding the best solutions to the most tricky of packaging head-scratchers can be difficult, but the answer to the problem can often be there for all to see, in nature. Catherine Dawes looks at the process of biomimetics

What type of packaging for liquid allows you to damage 80% of the pack and still hold secure 20% of the liquid? Answer: an apple.

Biomimetics is the practice of mimicking biochemical processes in manmade products. Coca-Cola, Mars, Diageo, Reckitt Benckiser and Ardagh Glass are just some of the companies that have employed Thoughtcrew to see if biomimetics could help their business. The business consultancy, based at the University of Bath, looks to nature to find ways to improve everything from individual products to supply chains through to entire R&D methods.

For instance, a drinks company had problems with its supply chain. It had products coming from a host of suppliers and breweries and hugely different volumes going into the on- and off-trades. "It had no idea how the different volumes worked together," says Thoughtcrew director Phil Richardson. "Everything was complicated by the fact there were different transport companies and different landlords and firms managing different bits," he adds.

Thoughtcrew used the metaphor of the crab to consider how the firm should move forward. The crab must temporarily discard the thing most valuable to it - its shell - in order to grow. The company was holding its most valuable brand sacred, and its unwillingness to change anything was hindering its growth.

Communication boost
Using biomimetics, Thoughtcrew and the company generated 45 new ideas. All of the different elements of the supply chain were brought together and given a new language to communicate in. "Often you find, the marketing department have colourways, engineers have spreadsheets and the finance department will have something else. So they can't talk to each other," says Richardson. He adds that one of the benefits of biomimetics is its universal nature. "You don't need a degree in biology. Biomimetics transcends even language - everyone knows what a crab is," he adds. "I've had hard-nosed engineers talking to me very excitedly about crabs," he adds.

So how does the process work? A company comes to Thoughtcrew with a problem; Richardson then goes away and researches any potential solutions to this problem in nature. He comes back to the company and collectively they investigate how this natural solution could be applied to their business model. "For example, if a company needed to create a waterproof adhesive that could be unpicked, I might suggest mussels as a starting point and we would unpick the biology of molluscs and how that could be applied," he explains.

Richardson believes that for the packaging industry, the key is to break out of the ‘here's the product, how do I package it?' mindset. Instead, he argues, companies should look to seeds for inspiration. Nature produces the seed and the delivery method at the same time - peas grow inside the pea pod, pips inside the fruit and pollen is produced tightly packed together so that each grain protects the next. Nature does not distinguish between the product and its packaging, but instead devises how to get the whole thing where it needs to be.

In practice, this can take a number of forms. One approach is to make the product and the packaging out of the same material, like the pea pod. Thoughtcrew has worked with a food manufacturer that investigated making the internal tray in its biscuit tins out of biscuit rather than polypropylene.

The second approach takes its lead from fruit - where the packaging for the seeds is valuable in its own right. Richardson suggests something along the lines of packing shaving equipment inside a bar of shaving soap. "The packaging could be made from a material that's inert while it travels to you and in the cupboard. When you were ready to use it you would put it in the fridge and it would turn into soap that you could then use to shave with," he says.

A snug fit
The pollen tactic uses the product itself as protection. Packing products closely together means each one protects the next. A delicate balance needs to be struck between keeping the products close enough to prevent them from moving around and becoming damaged and not squashing them. Pollen grains use spikes to lock into position. American school buses use this approach. Tall seats are packed closely together. In the event of a crash, the limited space between the seats means the children do not move very far and therefore do not injure themselves as much. Richardson suggests this method could be used to protect products in the supply chain - reducing the protective role of packaging and therefore enabling the amount of packaging to be reduced.

Richardson also argues that a firm's whole approach to R&D can be rethought along biomimetic lines. Standard business practice is to come up with lots of ideas and then whittle them down to the ones that are likely to be most successful. But Richardson argues that this prevents companies from trying more risky products or strategies. "A lot of companies rule out things that they think won't work. But nature always produces more than will survive, because it knows that some won't survive," he adds.

According to Thoughtcrew, CSR agendas should also follow  the principles of biomimetics. "In nature, there is no such thing as a supply chain. There is a supply cycle," he says. Nothing in nature is wasted, everything gets reused. Richardson argues that as nature never produces something that will be wasted, businesses shouldn't either. "Companies plan for their current rather than future needs. You should never create a department that you aren't prepared to take apart and reuse the resources elsewhere. You should never hire someone that you might have to make redundant. Why would you employ someone that isn't part of your company's future?" Richardson admits that biomimetics needs to form part of a long-term strategy rather than a quick fix.

But why is biomimetics any better as a source of inspiration than those espoused by similar business consultancies? Richardson has a succinct answer: "We - the human race - have been in business for hundreds of years. Nature has been doing its thing, successfully, for billions."

NATURAL SELECTION
"We're always looking for whatever we can steal," says Jon Davies, managing director at Marlowe-based design consultancy Holmes & Marchant. He says that while projects do not normally look directly to nature for inspiration, the design process should look to all sources of ideas.

"You often do things instinctively and then realise that nature has done it before," he adds. Davies cites examples such as the Yeo Valley yoghurt pot structure. The strength of the pots is provided by the removable card that forms the sides of the pot. The plastic content of the pot can then be ultra thin because it is only required to provide waterproofing, rather than strength. Davies argues that this is a structure that is used in living creatures. "If you look at skeletal forms, the strength is in the bones and the skin weighs almost nothing. If you're asked to lightweight a pack, it's a good way," he adds.

However, Davies says that using nature as the inspiration for a pack doesn't necessarily lead to a more environmentally friendly outcome. He suggests that when a particular type of packaging is first adopted there might not be the recycling infrastructure to deal with it. "Something like, using nanotechnology to put a crystallised structure in PET could potentially make it not recyclable," he explains. Davies says that while a design could potentially be recyclable, and therefore might well be recyclable in the future, being a trailblazer can have short-term drawbacks.

"Sometimes you have to do what everyone else does, even if that may not be the best option, because that's what there is an infrastructure for," he adds.

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
A butterfly might not seem like the obvious starting point when designing a waterproof RFID tag, but that's exactly the inspiration Omni-ID used. "Rather than an engineering approach, we took an out-of-the-box scientific approach," explains Thomas Pavela, president at California-based Omni-ID. The RFID tag specialist examined the way that the wings of the Blue Morpho butterfly reflect light. "We took that concept and applied it to a tag structure and said we want to reflect radio waves in the same way that the wing structure reflects light," he explains.

The passive Prox RFID tag uses a plasmonic structure of metal layers. These capture incoming radio waves. The captured waves build up and create a region of concentrated energy around the RFID microchip, which activates the chip.

This results in a tag that can be read through a metal mesh and through water - traditional barriers to RFID function, because metal reflects the waves while liquids absorb them.

Pavela says that while there are other solutions on the market, they are generally adaptations of other technology, rather than being specifically designed to work in harsh environments. "Our technology was designed and developed specifically to work in harsh environments," he adds.

Omni-ID has already received interest from IBM, which is testing the tags to track assets at its data centres. The product was launched at the RFID Journal Live exhibition in 2008 in Las Vegas, where it was displayed submerged in a fish tank surrounded by a metal mesh.