Tag: RunnerBeans

Posted on

Stacked multiple ‘beanifits’

Beans.

Fix nitrogen in the soil when they grow, increasing soil health in the process.

Are a useful replacement for more carbon-intensive protein sources such as meat

Require a third of the water to grow than beef, kilo for kilo.

Are high in fibre.

Are cheap.

The first factor on its own is significant. What this says is that by growing beans we increase soil health. In other words we can meet our needs and in doing so be part of a cycle of enrichment. That on its own is regenerative.

But add on the other factors and we see stacked multiple benefits. These are changes are transformative. Like reducing private cars in city centres, increased urban tree planting, and reintroduction of beavers into certain environments. These are interventions that have the potential to unlock so many benefits, they become a cascade.

In a resource scarce economy, we need design solutions that don’t just make a small change but that unlock a wave of better.

Bean data from 

Guardian.co.uk/Wind of change as celebrity chefs join drive to get more beans into diet.

Posted on

Six foot slugs

I get asked this question all the time. I present an example of a scheme or an initiative in which engineers have developed a glimpse of the future — a way to work with reclaimed construction materials, to work with place, to create a system of working that demonstrates how to build a thriving future. 

And then the question — how does it scale up?

This question of scaling makes sense in our parallel human-superimposed world of extraction, refining, manufacturing, distribution and assembly. In which the way to scale up is to build bigger, systems of supply.

But it doesn’t make sense in the living world.

In my garden, slugs are enormously successful. Somehow they have found a way to tough out the winter, and wait until the moment when the ground is wet enough, and then zoom up the stems of my runner beans and strip them.

Love them or loathe them, slugs are a great design. 

But in the living world, there isn’t a venture capitalist saying ‘lets 10x these slugs. I see the potential for 6 foot slugs’.

Instead, over time, living systems tend to grow in number and variety of systems. In other words, more slugs and more of lots of other things too.

It’s not so much a scale up but a diversify up. Each of these elements in relationship to each other. 

The question for the regenerative designer shifts from how do we scale up to: how can we allow the number and variety of local elements to grow and evolve?

In other words, from scaling up to creating a widening mosaic.