Savvy companies seeking a template for greener manufacturing need look no further than Earth's own biosphere, argues Gregory C. Unruh of the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Unruh outlines how the "basic principles that account for Earth's sustainability" can be applied to building greener products.

Rule #1: Limit your range of materials. Living things are made from various combinations of just four key elements - carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. This makes it easier to recycle organisms. The same applies for products - the more (and more complicated) materials you use, the harder it is to recover and reuse them when your product reaches the end of its life.

Rule #2: Focus your design on "upcycling." Nature's way of recycling is to reinsert recovered material into its continuing production processes - and yours should be, too. From the beginning of the design process, consider how your product's materials can be upcycled at the end of life. Using fewer resources in general is great, but you can get away with using more as long as you plan to make the most of old materials.

Rule #3: Build on basic platforms. Earth's incredible biodiversity boils down to just a few basic chemical structures, or platforms. The more you can leverage a single platform into a multitude of different products, the more cost-effective your business will be.

Rule #4: Rethink the buyer-supplier relationship. The transition from virgin materials to recovered materials will require close collaboration not only with suppliers but with consumers as well, as you are tasked with collecting the end-of-life products that will supply your future production processes.