Is Bamboo Sustainable?
Is Bamboo Sustainable?
Dear Dr. Donley,
Everywhere I look I’m seeing products made of bamboo popping up. It seems like an environmentally friendly choice — should I believe the hype?
Signed,
Am I Getting Bamboozled?
Dear Reed-er,
To be totally upfront, bamboo and I have a dark history. The first house I ever owned had a patch of bamboo in the backyard that ran under the fence and attacked my neighbor’s foundation. I spent an entire summer using a pickaxe to hack away at a root system that was as impenetrable as concrete. Deep down I know bamboo didn’t mean to ruin my summer and my back, but the trauma lingers. I can forgive, but I will never forget.
The thing that makes bamboo such a nuisance in residential areas, though, makes it a pretty ideal replacement for many unsustainable products that contain plastic, cotton or wood. Bamboo is a grass that will grow almost anywhere — and fast. Each stalk reaches full maturity in as little as a few months to a few years. It rarely requires pesticides or fertilizers and needs very little water. There’s no need to disturb the soil and replant, because the root system is always left intact and alive. Once you cut down the stalks, more just keep coming and coming and coming and COMING!
Deep breath. Bamboo can’t hurt you anymore.
So from a resource-production standpoint, bamboo is in the same category as hemp, rising above more unsustainable alternatives like plastic, wood or cotton. It’s incredibly strong and versatile and can be used to make just about anything from floors and countertops to diapers, toilet paper, tampons and clothes.
But the fairy tale gets a bit more complicated when you look at how bamboo’s actually grown and what happens after it’s harvested. While bamboo will grow out of a crack in a sidewalk if you let it, it’s more cost effective to grow it in vast monocultures to aid harvesting. Despite there being over 1,000 species of bamboo, just one reigns supreme for profitable cultivation: moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens). And though bamboo doesn’t need fertilizer or irrigation, these inputs are sometimes added to increase the bulk or number of stalks. Pesticides can also be added to get rid of unwanted vegetation on the ground and stimulate stalk growth.
So bamboo production can run the gamut from highly sustainable to “give me a break” as you go from responsibly harvesting in established groves to clearcutting biodiverse land to plant one species and maximizing output with use of damaging chemicals. As demand grows, the latter typically becomes dominant.
After harvest, bamboo can be lightly processed to make things like salad spoons, chopsticks, toothbrush handles or cutting boards or highly processed to make things like clothing. As with wood fibers, processing bamboo into something that’s soft and comfy takes a lot of treatment, with really nasty chemicals that harm the environment and nearby communities.
Whether bamboo is the more sustainable choice will be dependent on the situation. If the product you want to purchase is something you need, not something you can easily buy used or not available in recycled content, then often bamboo or hemp will be better than similar products made from plastic, cotton or wood. If demand keeps growing, that may change.
And remember, not all bamboo products are created equal. Be on the lookout for any certification or straightforward assurance that the bamboo was harvested sustainably or in alignment with your principles. Often that means passing up a brand that’s inexplicably 10 bucks cheaper than everything else.
Stay wild,
Dr. Donley
Dr. Nathan Donley is a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity who answers questions about how environmental toxins affect people, wildlife and the environment. Send him your questions at AskDrDonley@biologicaldiversity.org
https://medium.com/center-for-biological-diversity/is-bamboo-sustainable-ccd110187de8
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