If labor productivity goes up just one percent, that will produce the same bottom-line benefit as eliminating the entire energy bill. The gains in labor productivity that the case studies show would therefore be worth at least ten times as much as the direct energy savings,

the Bellcomb47 system of cardboard-like honeycombs sandwiched between sheets of cheap strandwood (pressed like chipboard, but using tough fibrous strands of wood). The sandwiches are prefabricated in many precisely cut shapes that fit tightly together like a child’s miniature house kit—only this kit can be full-sized. Two unskilled adults could

Second, Schilham laid out the pipes first and then installed the equipment, in reverse order from how pumping systems are conventionally installed.

Biological farming manages soil ecosystems in order to increase the amount of biota and life per acre by keen knowledge of food chains, species interactions, and nutrient flows, minimizing crop losses and maximizing yields by fostering diversity.

Savings furthest downstream will have the greatest leverage in making the upstream equipment smaller, and this saves not just energy but also capital cost.

United States in biological terms as its metabolic flow. Industry ingests energy, metals and minerals, water, and forest, fisheries, and farm products. It excretes liquids and solid waste—variously degradable or persistent toxic pollutants—and exhales gases, which are a form of molecular garbage.

industrial parks whose tenants will constitute an industrial ecosystem in which one company will feed upon the nontoxic and useful wastes of another.

Motors use three-fifths of the world’s electricity. Their largest use, at least a fifth of their total output, is pumping.

The next business frontier is rethinking everything we consume: what it does, where it comes from, where it goes, and how we can keep on getting its service from a net flow of very nearly nothing at all—but ideas.