GreenFlip

Bamboo can find a medley of new application areas that have a tremendous market opportunity, potential as well as value addition. Bamboo products could find application in high absorption and mass consumption industries like roads and housing because of its attributes of high strength and low weight. The use for bamboo grids for reinforcement of roads is an innovative application, which has not been used elsewhere in the world. Bamboo makes for excellent construction material and Ecuador has used bamboo extensively and successfully in construction of homes. Bamboo offers a low-cost but strong housing solution. Bamboo briquettes are also a new application as far as India is concerned, but they are widely used in other bamboo growing countries. Another market that could be tapped is the niche market of bamboo shoots. It is a highly popular delicacy across the world and its consumption in India needs to be promoted. Bamboo’s capacity for regeneration makes it an eminently suitable replacement for wood and it is perhaps why bamboo is referred to as “tomorrow’s timber.”

 The last 15 years has seen a mushrooming of the variety of commercially available bamboo products. As well as traditional products, there is now successful commercial production of bamboo flooring, laminated furniture, building panels (similar to timber based plywood, chipboard or MDF), high quality yarn and fabrics, activated carbon, bamboo extracts and so forth. These are no longer novelty items but are successfully competing in the marketplace and gaining market share. These recent developments have created new opportunities for leveraging bamboo as a basis for rural industrialization and poverty reduction. In particular, the emergence of new higher added-value processing increases the sector’s potential economic impact, especially in poor rural communities, compared to traditional lower value processing industries.

Unfortunately not all of the bamboo plant can be used to such effect. Premium processing needs premium parts of the bamboo (typically the middle lower part of large culms). So modern bamboo industries need a mix of different businesses producing a variety of products, with premium bamboo parts going to premium uses (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture), mid quality parts (e.g. upper mid section) going to medium value added processing (e.g. blinds, mats, chopsticks) and the leftovers, sawdust and other processing ‘waste’ being used in the bulk processing industries such as paper, charcoal or chipboard.

But the use of bamboo in these industries would be possible only if it makes commercial sense. Unless it makes business sense to replace existing materials with bamboo, the crossover would not be possible. To make bamboo and its products economically viable, the intervention of a number of facilitators and stakeholders is required. 

From a production perspective, it is possible to divide the sector into distinct sub sectors, each of which can exist on a standalone basis or in combination with the others:

1. Handicrafts: characterized by high levels of semi-skilled and skilled manual processing of relatively small volumes of bamboo culms.

2. Bamboo shoots: essentially a high value agricultural crop that can either be grown primarily for shoots or in parallel with the production of culms.

3. Industrial processing: semi-mechanized and mechanized processing of comparatively large volumes of bamboo culms. Industrial processing industries can be further divided according to the value of the processing and grade of material used:

i. Premium processing (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture, Ply board)

ii. Medium value processing (e.g. Incense sticks, Blinds)

iii. Low value and bulk processing (e.g. charcoal, paper & pulp)

4. Unprocessed culms: supplied to the local construction industry or used for domestic household applications.  

From a production perspective, it is possible to divide the sector into distinct sub sectors, each of which can exist on a standalone basis or in combination with the others:

1. Handicrafts: characterized by high levels of semi-skilled and skilled manual processing of relatively small volumes of bamboo culms.

2. Bamboo shoots: essentially a high value agricultural crop that can either be grown primarily for shoots or in parallel with the production of culms.

 3. Industrial processing: semi-mechanized and mechanized processing of comparatively large volumes of bamboo culms. Industrial processing industries can be further divided according to the value of the processing and grade of material used:

i. Premium processing (e.g. flooring, laminated furniture, Ply board)

ii. Medium value processing (e.g. Incense sticks, Blinds)

iii. Low value and bulk processing (e.g. charcoal, paper & pulp)

           4. Unprocessed culms: supplied to the local construction industry or used for domestic household applications.

Bamboo can play a role in disasters and relief in the following ways:

1. Bamboo’s ability to withstand vibrations help in mitigating disasters. Buildings made of bamboo survive earthquakes while concrete structures collapse. Latin American houses built with bamboo have survived earthquakes.

 2. Bamboo’s soil binding properties helps in preventing land degradation, soil erosion and land slides. It preserves watersheds. Underground roots can spread over a 100 square metre area. When rains fail bamboo rhizomes increase soil moisture. This can help in drought proofing.

 3. Bamboo plantation reduce the impact of winds and hence cyclone intensity.

In many parts of the world, through old practices and recent innovations, bamboo has been used for the purpose of construction, especially as a medium to cope with disasters like landslides and earthquakes. In Limon, Costa Rica, only the bamboo houses from the National Bamboo Project withstood the 1992 earthquake that reached 7.6 on the Richter scale. Properly constructed bamboo framed homes have demonstrated excellent wind strength. Flexible and lightweight bamboo enables structures to survive in earthquakes of Costa Rica as well as Columbia.

In the Latin American and Caribbean countries, due to increasing causalities due to earthquakes, in the continent, bamboo as a construction material is being promoted.

The aftermath of destruction in Costa Rica helped to focus worldwide attention on the potential of bamboo housing in disaster relief. A similar disaster struck the Cafetero Axis region of Colombia in January 1999. The Colombian Bamboo Society was quick to react to the urgent need for housing by earthquake victims. Society co-founders, architect Simon Velez and botanist Ximena Londono, worked together to design and build bamboo prototype housing for the victims. Their efforts also publicized the post-earthquake engineering studies that showed that housing which used traditional bamboo lattice work suffered far less damage than those employing “modern” concrete methods.

It started from an earthquake in Columbia where a watchtower of a local Coffee Park, in Pijao designed by Simon Velez and built by his partner Marcelo Villegas survived. Eighteen meters tall, and seven meter free overhang, it remained unmoved by the earthquake. The municipality of Pijao, with 8,000 inhabitants, located next to the epicenter only counted three casualties. Nearly all-traditional houses, which still stood, as if nothing had happened, were made from bamboo.

 Concrete bridges are dangerous and expensive in regions prone to landslides. Bamboo again comes to the rescue here. Some of the earliest of all suspension bridges were ones constructed with cables woven from bamboo strips. Throughout their long history, the Chinese have built suspension bridges to span fast-flowing rivers and deep ravines, and the Incas also designed hanging bamboo bridges.

Bamboo architecture in South America is born as an intelligent constructive reaction after seismic events. This is the case of the Peruvian “Quincha” , constructive system that is used since the XVII century in Lima, and in the rest of Peru and Ecuador and the Colombian “Bahareque”, very used from the XIX th centuryin the coffee growing area, west of Bogotá, in the highest seismical area of this country,. Both building systems resisted very well all the earthquakes that happened along their history. Costa Rica, without any bamboo tradition, created the Bamboo Foundation ca. 1980, and made a lot of quarters with bamboo houses that withstand very well the tremors caused by earthquakes. In Tucumán, Argentina, bamboo is used as a building material in rural areas.

 Bamboo offers the best properties for the seismic-resistant constructions. Because of its light weight, high resistance and great flexibility, Bamboo turns out to be particularly adequate to withstand earthquakes. In fact, even though they are covered with “ferrocemento” (iron-cement), Bamboo houses weigh almost 40% less than the traditional ones, being thus the seismic load reduced in the same proportion. Bamboo high resistance is comparable to that of the best wood. With its more efficient natural design, its flexibility provides it with a great capacity for seismic energy dissipation.

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WHY FLIP TO BAMBOO FABRIC?

Bamboo is grown without pesticides, naturally anti-bacterial and hypoallergenic, breathable, and absorbent.

Sustainability

Bamboo just may be the most sustainable living thing on earth. It can grow as much as 3 feet overnight and reaches a mature height of 75 feet in less than 3 months. Bamboo reaches maturity quickly and is ready for harvesting in about 4 years. Bamboo does not require replanting after harvesting because its vast root network continually sprouts new shoots while pulling in sunlight and greenhouse gases and converting them to new green growth. Bamboo takes in 5 times as much green house gas, and produces 35% more oxygen than an equivalent stand of trees.

Hypoallergenic/Pesticides Free

Bamboo fiber has a natural anti-bacterial component; therefore no pesticides are needed to protect the grass. Test results show an over 70% bacteria death rate after being incubated on bamboo fabric. Other fibers such as cotton may have a chemically added anti-bacteria function that could cause skin allergies, but bamboo is naturally hypoallergenic.

Breathable and Absorbent

Cross sections of bamboo fiber are filled with micro-gaps and micro-holes that allow for better moisture absorption and ventilation than other fibers. Bamboo apparel can absorb and evaporate human sweat instantaneously so your clothes won’t stick to your skin. Tests have found that bamboo fiber keeps you 1-2 degrees cooler than other fibers and has a 60% higher water absorption rate than cotton. Bamboo is the ultimate in comfort since it keeps you cool in hot weather and warm in cooler temperatures.

Water Conservation

Conventional cotton requires over 100,000 cubic feet of water per acre to grow, whereas bamboo tolerates drought extremely well and only requires minimal rainwater. In addition, bamboo fiber does not hold odour so you can wear your clothing over and over without frequent washing. Talk about a great way to conserve our water resources!