The Biomimicry of Peak Scents
Guest post by Melissa Jurgensen, Biomimicry Consultant to Peak Scents
My first experiences with Peak Scents date back to 1997, when I shared a house with founder DeeAnn and our dear friend Kristin, an incredibly bright botanist. At the time, DeeAnn was making small batches of Peak Scents by hand. Plants were woven into so much of our everyday life, from our conversations to the world around us, and you could feel how deeply that connection to plants shaped what DeeAnn was creating.
Biomimicry was in the air, too. Friends were attending the Bioneers Conference and coming home talking about this emerging field and its possibilities. As a certified herbalist who grew up learning from plants alongside her mother, Phyllis Hogan, founder of Flagstaff's Winter Sun Trading Co., DeeAnn had plenty to connect with. Seeing plants as mentors is embedded in DeeAnn's DNA.
Fast forward to 2026, DeeAnn has been alongside me during my three-year journey toward completing my MS in Biomimicry. Along the way, Peak Scents became a case study in my coursework, and twice I've had the opportunity to discuss deep concepts of Biomimicry with the entire Peak Scents team. These conversations led to my new role as Peak Scents' Biomimicry Consultant.
And they've led us to an interesting question:
How is Peak Scents currently operating like nature and what more might the team learn by looking to nature as a guide?
What is Biomimicry?
Biomimicry is a design field and source of innovation that looks to the living world for solutions to human challenges.
At its simplest, the process begins with a challenge. We ask how nature accomplishes the same function, study the strategies that have evolved over billions of years, acknowledge nature as the source of that knowledge and give thanks for the knowledge, and explore how those lessons might inform our own designs.
Think of the Burr plant that inspired Velcro or the Kingfisher's beak that helped engineers redesign Japan's bullet train’s nose. Biomimicry isn't about learning from nature; it's about learning how nature works and then translating that understanding into a design.
But biomimicry is more than a design; it has three essential elements: emulate, ethos, and reconnect.
Emulate means learning from nature's forms, processes, and systems to solve functional challenges.
Ethos reminds us that we are nature. Learning from the living world comes with responsibility, respect, reciprocity, and consideration of what we give back.
Reconnect asks us to rebuild our relationship with the natural world. By observing nature, we recognize patterns, relationships, and strategies we might otherwise miss.
How Does Peak Scents Operate Like Nature?
One tool biomimicry practitioners use to guide and evaluate design is Life’s Principles, developed by Biomimicry 3.8, found here in the organization’s Biomimicry DesignLens. Life’s Principles describe patterns found across living systems that have helped life persist and thrive on Earth.
Looking at Peak Scents through this lens, three Life's Principles stand out: (1) Use Life-Friendly Chemistry, (2) Cultivate Cooperative Relationships, and (3) Recycle All Materials. What's interesting is that these patterns aren't only about the ingredients inside a Peak Scents bottle. They show up across the business, from product formulation to customer relationships to the refillery.
Use Life-Friendly Chemistry
Living systems build using chemistry that supports life.
For Peak Scents, this principle is reflected in a long-standing commitment to carefully selected ingredients and formulations intended to care for, protect, and rejuvenate the people using them. This philosophy goes back to those early days when DeeAnn first began formulating products, informed by her training as an herbalist and her relationship with plants.
Biomimicry offers an opportunity to take this relationship with plants a step further. Many of the functions Peak Scents’ products provide, retain moisture, maintain barrier integrity, protect from UV, repair damage, and neutralize oxidative stress are functions plants perform for themselves every day.
Rather than asking only, What beneficial ingredient can we obtain from this plant?, biomimicry asks, How does the plant accomplish the function we are trying to achieve and how might Peak Scents emulate those strategies through product chemistry that is itself conducive to life?
That's the shift biomimicry brings to product development: from using nature's ingredients to learning from nature's strategies.
Cultivate Cooperative Relationships
A forest, meadow, coral reef, or desert is made possible by relationships. Organisms exchange resources, information, protection, and services in ways that support both themselves and the larger system. Life depends on relationships.
The recent Peak Scents blog about the Alpine Rose is a good example. The interest isn't only in what can be obtained from the plant, but in understanding the plant itself—how it lives in its alpine environment and the strategies that allow it to protect itself and thrive under challenging conditions.
This is where biomimicry's Ethos becomes important. If we approach nature as a mentor rather than simply a source of materials, the relationship can't be one-way. A plant becomes more than a useful ingredient. It is a living organism with a story, a place, relationships, and something to teach us.
That relationship also asks us to give back to the living systems from which we benefit. Peak Scents dedicates 1% of its profits to nonprofit organizations supporting the environment, education, and communities. Its partners include United Plant Savers, which protects wild medicinal plants, and American Rivers, which works to protect rivers and clean water. Peak Scents also supports tree planting and ocean-plastic recovery through its sustainability partnerships.
And cooperative relationships at Peak Scents extend beyond plants. They include the people who make the products, customers, suppliers and partners, and the Flagstaff community in which Peak Scents has grown for decades.
Recycle All Materials
This may be the easiest Life's Principle to see when you walk into Peak Scents.
In nature, the idea of “away” doesn't really exist. Materials move through systems continuously. What is left over from one process becomes a resource for another.
Peak Scents put a version of this principle into practice in 2022 when it became a refillery.
Customers can bring back containers and refill them again and again with household products such as dish soap, hand soap, shampoo, conditioner, and detergent, as well as nearly all of the skincare products Peak Scents manufactures itself. The container remains in circulation, performing its function for as long as possible. When a container finally reaches the end of its useful life, Peak Scents accepts it for recycling.
This isn't just an abstract life principle for me. I haven't bought a new shampoo or dish soap bottle in four years. Thank you Peak Scents!
What Does This Mean for Us?
Biomimicry’s Life’s Principles give us a way to understand how life works and consider whether our own designs create conditions conducive to life. They also give us a yardstick against which to measure the products we use and the businesses we support.
For Peak Scents, biomimicry provides a framework for recognizing practices that are already part of the company and a guide for where to go next. It means choosing chemistry that supports life, giving back to the living systems on which the business depends, cultivating cooperative relationships, and keeping materials in circulation for as long as possible.
For the rest of us, biomimicry offers another way to think about the choices behind the products we bring into our lives. Does this product work with living systems? Are its materials used responsibly? Does the business strengthen the relationships and natural systems that make the product possible?
These are biomimicry questions, and they are questions any of us can ask. Do you have a question you’d like to ask nature? Try it! Visit AskNature, the Biomimicry Institute’s collection of biological strategies for inspiration and innovation.
