16th April 2012
Could bamboo be the new super material?

When you think of bamboo, you probably visualise the poles of those fishing nets you buy at the beach or the bamboo canes you use in the garden to support your runner beans as they grow.  Maybe you think of pandas too - I know I do!  But the once humble bamboo is now being hailed as a new super material.  Newly developed processing techniques mean that it can be used in the construction of entire buildings, to make you a pair of socks and for literally thousands of other applications in between.

Believe it or not, bamboo is a member of the grass family.  And this super grass has two big talents:  the first is that it can grow phenomenally fast, in fact it's the world's fastest growing plant.  Gaining height by up to one metre per day, it reaches its full height within one growing season and after just four or five years, it can be harvested annually and sustainably as a renewable resource.  Its other party trick is that it can absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  In fact, one hectare of bamboo plantation can absorb up to 62 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.  An equivalent area of young forest can only absorb around 15 tonnes of CO2, meaning that bamboo is more than four times as effective at capturing atmospheric CO2.  So it grows really fast, is sustainable and can help to combat global warming.  There is little not to like about bamboo, it would seem!

In deforested countries like Nicaragua, it's gaining a lot of new fans.  Bamboo is now being planted in areas where slash-and-burn farming has cleared away the rainforest.  All of the big tropical hardwood trees have been harvested and without the trees, the fragile soil could be washed away.  Even in areas where the soil does survive, it takes decades or even centuries for the hardwood trees to grow to a height at which they can be harvested again.

Until recently, bamboo was viewed as worthless, but now the local people's perspective is being altered considerably.  The global bamboo market is worth US $10bn every year and this is predicted to double in the next five years, giving good reason to invest in new bamboo plantations.  Where once there was rainforest, now there are bamboo plantations springing up, bringing with them jobs and much-needed wages for the local people.

There are risks of course.  Developing countries could become overdependent on the growth of bamboo and its increasing role as the next green super material.  It could get to a point at which countries are growing bamboo to the exclusion of other crops, meaning that monoculture could develop.  It is also vulnerable both to pests and to flooding, so it's not absolutely perfect.  But for the moment, the problems seem small in comparison to the benefits it can offer and certainly ecologically-minded investors are being encouraged by companies like EcoPlanet to put some of their capital into 'bamboo bonds', which help provide the start-up funding needed for bamboo plantations and which promise savers a 500% return over 15 years.

Did you know?

• About 1.5 billion people in the world depend on bamboo and bamboo-like plants for their livelihoods

• There is a biomass electricity generating plant in the Phillipines that is powered by burning bamboo chips

• Bamboo's tough fibres can be cooked and made into a fibrous solution before being woven into material

• About 80% of the world's bamboo is currently produced by China

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