While there has always been a concern about keeping the world as clean and as green as possible, there has been a noticeable surge in recent years in discussing sustainability. There is still a great effort to recycle and save natural resources, and now steps are being taken to reduce carbon footprints and the ripples we create within ecosystems. Sustainability is the act of giving back just as much as we take from nature, which ensures that there will be plenty of water, minerals and other resources for future generations.

Regenerative design is a sustainability term that refers to constructing buildings and habitats that are essentially their own ecosystem. It sounds similar to sustainability, but with regenerative designs a resource is constantly regenerated where a sustainable resource cannot be brought back once it is lost or used up. Buildings with a regenerative design basically give back as much of a regenerating resource as they take. A regenerative building uses solar panels for power, panels that can produce more power than the building actually uses.

Biomimicry, borrowing from the system, processes and models of nature and applying them to sustainability and human living, also comes in to play with regenerative design. For example, researchers applied biomimicry to keep a building cool without the use of air conditioning by studying a termite mound and the way that it always remained the same temperature no matter how hot or cold it became outside. Other examples of biomimicry are using echolocation like bats to create canes that help individuals who are visually impaired and borrowing ideas from spiders that can create web silk as strong as Kevlar in body armor for soldiers and law enforcement officers.

Sustainable living and sustainability has multiple definitions, such as taking only as much from nature as we need, taking care of the Earth so the Earth can take care of us and living within the planet’s resources. Sustainable living can also be seen as a careful balancing act between the three systems of economics, social and natural. Sustainable living practices may include driving an automobile that gets good gas mileage, using reusable grocery bags, reducing energy consumption, taking shorter showers, using public transportation and making changes to diet and eating habits.

Sustainable design seeks to improve on the comfort and overall health of a building’s occupants. Some of the major points of sustainable design are to save water, fully utilize site potential, use environmentally-friendly products and lower non-renewable energy use. A natural building may be constructed with a sustainable design in mind. Durability and the use of minimally processed or recycled materials are all taken into consideration while constructing a natural building.

Permaculture is the practice of gardening while always being mindful of the surrounding environment and working in harmony with those surroundings rather than culturing the soil, land and resources to suit whatever it is that is to be grown in that area. The philosophy of following in the footsteps of nature and using what it provides is one of the cornerstones of permaculture. Environmentalists, organic gardeners, conservationists, recyclers, urban activists and indigenous people may all practice permaculture, perhaps even without realizing it.

If we take the time to stop, look and take notice, there’s much that we can learn from nature and the Earth in terms of sustainability. Businesses may be eager to know that not only can they reduce their carbon footprint and pollution output with regenerative designs and natural buildings, they can save money as well. Other individuals can take comfort in the knowledge that future generations will have the opportunity to see all of the Earth’s beauty in its pure, unpolluted form. Sustainability is not only sustaining the Earth, it’s sustaining the human race as well.