Sustainable Decks...from animals?

 

• Here is an idea which I came up with for my sustainability marketing class. 

• We were asked to incorporate the natural designs found in nature, into a product which would make it more sustainable. Here is my idea for decks. 

• I read that horse hooves are among the most crack resistant materials found on earth!

• So I thought of making a compound which would mimic the chemical makeup of hooves.

• Then use this compound as plies for decks. 

• Instead of using Maple for the plies, the "hoof plies" would be more sustainable - and way more resistant to cracking!

• I also was inspired by the "glue" mussels use in order to bond themselves to many surfaces - wet or dry for long periods of time.

• If we could somehow extract this natural "glue" our decks would have better resistance to chipping as well as water damage! 

• Epoxy is nasty stuff for our environment, and using something natural, which is a lot stronger than our synthetic inventions would make a lot more sense, right? 

• This biomimicry stuff is very interesting, and is applicable to almost any product with enough imagination!

• What is biomimicry you ask? Check it out here http://biomimicryinstitute.org/

• That's all I have for now, have a great day!