Bamboo, Part II: What's so good about the stuff?

Posted by: hipstomp on Tuesday, February 19 2008

Anyone know why bamboo is becoming so popular? As we've seen in Bamboo, Part I, it's a total bitch to process, so why not stick with wood?

The short answer is it's green, sustainable, strong, plentiful, and profitable. As it has been for a while--people have been using it for millenia to make furniture, weapons, tools, water-bearing systems, clothing from the fibers, and you can even eat the stuff (good source of low-calorie potassium, who knew).

The long answer of why bamboo is good is as follows:

Green: It's the fastest-growing plant you can use to reforest an area, and it produces 35% more oxygen than an equally-sized batch of trees.

Sustainable: Unlike trees which need to be cut down, bamboo can be harvested without damaging the original plant, and it then regenerates in three to five years. None of this waiting-around-for-30-years for your reforestation project to kick in.

Strong: Harder than maple but lighter than oak, the tensile strength of bamboo is comparable to steel.

Plentiful: A stand of bamboo can generate around 200 poles in five years--the same length of time it takes one tree to grow big enough to cut down.

Profitable: Bamboo is essentially grass, and it grows way faster than trees--some varieites of bamboo can grow four feet in a day. For a lumber harvester, the yield can be 25 times what you'd get from regular ol' trees.

The chief threat to this wondrous and bountiful plant is the fearsome Panda bear, but environmentalists will be happy to know we've done a pretty good job of stamping those little buggers out.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Share this post!
Digg This! | Save to del.icio.us | Submit to Reddit | Stumble It!

Comment on this post

Name:
Email:
URL:
Comment:

Bamboo is a wonderful building material and can be remarkably sustainable. I visited Hong Kong recently and was wildly impressed at the prevalence of bamboo scaffolding. The problem is, much of the bamboo that makes its way into our consumer goods was grown on clear-cut rainforest land. Know your source! Just because something can be grown sustainably, doesn't mean it is.

It's worth mentioning some of the negatives:
Bamboo varies hugely in quality. Younger bamboo is much softer, but much cheaper to produce (faster harvest cycle = more bamboo).
Bamboo is glued together with glues that are very often toxic. It's a Chinese product and not seriously regulated. Some Bamboo (i.e. Woven Strand process which has more glue in it) was banned in Europe because of excessive VOC (volatile organic compounds) released into homes - including formaldehyde.
Also, in some places, bamboo has become so over harvested, the indigenous population which relied on bamboo for their homes, their food, their tools and so on are being starved.
It ain't as pretty as it looks!

while i always hear the marvelous benefits of bamboo, which truly do run the gammet, i must say that i have a terrible time maintaining it in my yard. it DOES indeed grow quite fast, and it quickly can take over a yard. every spring, i cut down new growth because i lose more yard. i'm trying to find an environmentally friendly way of donating it, but i can't seem to find anything out there for this purpose. i'd love to hear ideas....