Collin Cavote
Collin Cavote is the only person in the world with a degree in “biomimicry” — a major he designed himself while building a company that “harnesses nature’s genius.”
In 2008, Collin Cavote ’15 dropped out of business school at Temple University and left the grid behind.
He headed west, to Lopez Island, part of the San Juan chain off the coast of Washington state. There, he lived simply and sustainably, all the while certain that his future would reveal itself.
And one day, it did. On the picturesque horizon, a crude oil tanker traveling across the Pacific splintered his beautiful serenity. And gave him pause.
The oil tanker was a massive, mobile pollution machine. How long before the thousands of gallons of crude aboard entered the atmosphere as carbon emissions, he wondered?
“This was my first understanding of climate change; that was the seed,” Cavote says.
He didn’t know it then, but that moment set him on a path that would lead him to later create an air-purification company while a student at Drexel, called Biome.
Cavote returned to the East Coast in 2012, specifically to finish college in the custom major program offered through Drexel’s Pennoni Honors College. At Drexel, Cavote designed a degree that no other graduate in the country has: a bachelor’s in biomimicry.
“When I decided to come back to school and solve some of the world’s problems, I knew I needed a really interdisciplinary program where I could study a broad array of interests,” he explains.
So what is biomimicry?
“The whole premise is that nature has so much to teach
us,” Cavote explains. “It’s been here for over four billion years, responding and evolving. When humans are confronted with a problem, it’s best to look at the ways in which nature has already solved a similar problem. We need to use that sage wisdom from the natural world to make our solutions more resilient, and hopefully more sustainable.”
While at Drexel, Cavote found inspiration in the biowall in the University’s Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building. The 80-foot-high wall of ferns and other oxygen-rich plants is one of the first of its kind at any university in the country.
This could be the answer, Cavote thought. But people won’t likely pay money to build biowalls on such a large scale. Perhaps a smaller version would do.
That was the beginning of Biome, a company Cavote established in San Francisco that produces living, breathing biowalls for homes and businesses.
“I was able to use Drexel’s custom major to build my company — my coursework propelled the company forward and the last year of my schooling was, in fact, spent running the company,” Cavote says. “There was never a barrier between school and the real world. My experience was super organic and, in a way, quite beautiful. Since graduating, Biome just keeps moving forward, it just keeps growing.”
As of now, Biome has moved beyond the prototype phase and is ready to hit the market. For a pre-order price of around $2,500, interested buyers can bring a world of air-purifying benefits into their home or office with a personal biowall that is about the size of a large flat-screen television. The self-sufficient unit waters itself through a unique filtration system and feeds on air pollution that has been trans- formed into nutrients.
“You don’t have to do anything but install it,” says Cavote. “We realized early on that, for this to be successful, we had to make nature easy.”
The biowalls’ benefits speak for themselves, Cavote says.
“Imagine 32 percent less stress, 13 percent fewer sick days and 61 percent higher cognitive function,” Cavote says. “That’s what Harvard University and the Environmental Protection Agency are saying about bringing nature inside and improving your indoor air quality. Once our biowall is installed, you can expect 200 percent cleaner air within 24 hours.”
Numbers like those have given Cavote confidence that Biome will succeed. “In 15 years, I predict that every building you walk into will have one of our biowalls,” he says. “These things will grow and clean the air right inside the spaces where you live, work and play.”
— Katie Clark
