Bamboo The Latest Miracle Created by Nature
I was amazed the other evening as i watched the news and they focused on the many uses of bamboo. If you are thinking bamboo fishing rods and huts from Gilligan’s Island, then you know what bamboo looks like. If you don’t, you cane read more about it here: Wikipedia article on bamboo . It’s quite remarkable that a “wood” bearing plant can grow over 3 feet in a single day, without needing humans to care for it. Many of us have seen bamboo used for flooring in recent years. Bamboo was easily accecpted because it was considerably less costly than wooden flooring, yet provided many of the same visual and tactile experiences of wooden flooring. Overall bamboo is an excellent substitute for wood, requires fewer resources to grow, creating less environmental impact than current lumbering practices. And, like wood, it stores carbon.If only a similar solution could be found for the environmental impact of the cotton, used in so many pieces of our clothing. No, i’m not suggesting synthetics.
If we could eliminate the chemical and water use dedicated to growing cotton, it would be a good thing environmentally. Though it would be considerably less good for the people who grow cotton. There does appear to be a substitute for the ”cotton problem”. The solution is found in the form of a plant, known as bamboo. Yes, bamboo! I am not attempting to bamboozle you, this is the truth. Bamboo can be made into fibers, threads and ultimately fabric that can replace cotton and synthetic fibers in our clothing. It produces fibers softer than cotton. Check out one manafacturer’s site: Bamboo Clothes.
Around the world we are seeing bamboo join other fabrics in our closet. So, have we saved the world, with the miraculous bamboo plant? No! There is no 1 step to that saves the world, it’s a series of steps, by billions of people that will make the difference. So if we save slower growing trees from industry by supplying fast growing bamboo to the paper, building and garment industry, we reduce environmental impact, not thru sacrifice, but through substitution.