How Green is Bamboo?

Replies to This Green Expert Q&A

Permalink Reply by Phil Sewell on February 4, 2010 at 11:02pm

Hi Stephanie, One of the reasons I was excited when clients started asking for bamboo in the carpentry projects I was doing for them was because of it's reputation as a sustainable material.

I've since learned that the situation is a bit more complicated than I initially thought.

The best thing about bamboo as a material is the low impact on the environment to grow it when compared to wood. Bamboo is a grass that can grow very quickly, almost all of the plant is used and the root systems can regenerate new growth. The advantages are obvious when we put it up against the unsustainable and wasteful harvesting of trees. Trees take decades to grow to useful size and once they're cut down it will take decades for new trees to grow. Much of the tree (bark, roots, branches) is wasted. The collateral damage to forest ecosystems can be devastating.

However there's no evidence that the industrial processes used to manufacture products from bamboo are less harmful to the environment than other manufacturing processes. Making bamboo plywood can be just as toxic as making plywood from timber. This may also be true of bamboo fabrics.

Since most bamboo products are made in Asia we might also want to factor in a larger carbon footprint to transport these products to market. This may not always be the case however. In my experience using bamboo in furniture making and cabinetry, it might replace a tropical hardwood like wenge or sapele that have traveled a similar distance from south America.

Here are links to some further reading;

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