Ecosystems run on cascades: the waste of one process is the feedstock of the next, and nothing is optimised in isolation. Pauli catalogues business models built on this logic (coffee grounds growing mushrooms, and a hundred more), arguing that local resources cascaded through multiple uses out-compete both extractive "red" economies and expensive "green" premium products.
A design method for whole sites and small economies, not just buildings. Ask of every output: what eats this next? Greywater to gardens, food waste to aquaponics, heat to drying. On a small island this is less a theory than a memory. Gili Meno once ran on exactly these cascades (coconut, seaweed lines on the reef, salt evaporated from the lake) before tourism flattened the local economy into a single fragile revenue stream.
Many of Pauli's hundred cases are speculative or never scaled. Treat the book as a pattern library to test, not a portfolio of proven ventures.
Gili Meno Zero (the masterplan is a Blue Economy problem), Green School BiRD Lab (aquaponics and nutrient cascades as curriculum).
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