The Alpine edelweiss flower may hold clues to making better suncreams, while oyster shells could give hints about storing greenhouse gases in an emerging industrial revolution that mimics nature.

"A more fascinating horizon is opening up for the green economy," Achim Steiner, according to the head of the UN Environment Programme, in giving findings of a UNEP biomimicry project identifying 100 new ideas from nature.

The survey shows companies are already borrowing from the natural world for products ranging from wind turbine blades that keep turning in low winds, based on the flippers of a humpback whale, to dirt-resistant surfaces inspired by the lotus plant.

"Life in 3.8 billion years has created an enormous number of blueprints, designs, chemical recipes and technologies," said Janine Benyus of the Biomimicry Guild, which wrote the report.

"Conserving habitats is a wellspring for the next industrial revolution," she said.

The white edelweiss flower, for instance, has woolly hairs that protect the plant's cells from harmful ultraviolet wavelengths, which are powerful in the high Alps. The hairs also shield against wind and cold.

Copying the chemicals in the hairs could help design better suncreams. And the plant could also help design ways to protect packaging or plastics from ultraviolet degradation. The way pearl oysters convert carbon dioxide into a calcium carbonate shell could be imitated to help slow global warming. Carbon dioxide occurs naturally but levels are rising sharply because of human emissions of the greenhouse gas.