Material Alternatives
bamboo
many uses
sustainable?
Durable?
fuel (which burns more cleanly and efficiently), furniture, paper making, construction, fiber for clothes, tableware,medicine, and healthproducts. a
its able to be grown anywhere, with more then 1,000 diffrent species.
Recourses
it grows very rapidly, in some cases three to four feet a day. (bamboo can grow up to one meter a day)
it doesn't need fertilizer, pesticides, or much water
emits more co2
stronger then hardwood and steel.
no deforestation, because you can annually harvest. and it takes 4 years to harvest, when pine and oak take up to 30-80 years until harvest.
dont worry about pandas they eat a whole different species of bamboo
but there is an image problem.
its associated with poverty. "poor mans timber"
they are making engineered building wood out of it
including transport, production, processing. They have a negative carbon footprint of almost -1/2 a ton of co2 per ton of bamboo building hardwood they produced.
green school, bali
It reforests eroded slopes, because of hectare of bamboo planted captures 1,000 tons of co2
bon challenge
can hold a six story structure.
its also light and flexible.
what is luxury, scarcity? or being out in nature.
has greater tensile strength: means that it withstands more pressure before breaking. It withstands compression better than concrete.
it becomes harder over the years with a wood-like toughness
its good for earthquake prone areas.
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When it comes to saving the earth, there’s no simple, single, silver bullet. We need to consider every option from every angle, and apply a panoply of well-thought-out innovations. And surely, bamboo can and should play an important role in that dynamic polyculture of solutions