Why Is Bamboo Sustainable?

Bamboo is often mistaken for a tree when in fact it is grass. Being a grass makes it better at storing carbon than most tree species. Bamboo has a lower “total ecosystem carbon” than forests, but one that is similar to tree plantations. Intensive management of bamboo clumps can increase their total carbon-storing capacity. Harvesting bamboo for “durable products” also offsets the need for carbon-intensive materials.

Bamboo can sequester 50 tons of CO2 per hectare per year. This means that every hectare of bamboo that is planted in the world is able to absorb 50 tons of CO2 every year. To put this into perspective, for the same area of timber planted, bamboo is able to sequester 3 times as much CO2 from the atmosphere. With greenhouse gas emissions rising at alarming rates, bamboo is a valuable tool to help mitigate this event.

Finally, when bamboo is used in construction, it has the potential to act as a carbon sink by absorbing more carbon than is released during construction. Unfortunately, right now there are no clear international standards for recognizing bamboo as a carbon offset.

Another valuable quality of bamboo is its ability to restore degraded land, particularly in tropical and subtropical climates. The primary reason for this is that bamboo can hold large amounts of water. A single bamboo clump can hold 5000 liters of water for 6 to 9 months (the length of the dry season) and release it to the surrounding vegetation. This gives bamboo the critical ability to help the land recover from deforestation and degradation.

Bamboo-based regenerative agroforestry systems can be created to empower farmers, women, and entire communities. Managing a bamboo clump takes a village. It requires a lot of manual labor and attention to harvest and process bamboo. However, this can become very beneficial within a rural community. The sustainable management of a bamboo clump will guarantee a livelihood and an income for generations, enabling a community to thrive and creating a sustainable economic system for years to come.

Bamboo grows at a faster rate than any other timber product. Whilst a tree needs 30-50 years to grow before it is ready to be harvested into timber fit for construction, a single bamboo shoot can grow up to a meter in a single day, and reaches maturity in just 3-4 years. A single bamboo clump will provide you with a renewable alternative to timber for generations. After seeding, you only need to wait for the clump to establish itself, most likely 5-10 years, before you can begin to harvest your material annually. The healthy management of a bamboo clump helps the bamboo to grow and thrive and yearly harvesting of the mature poles creates space for new shoots to grow into healthy poles.

For construction, there is no other material quite like it. Bamboo has a natural weight-to-strength ratio better than steel. This means that though bamboo is very light due to its hollow profile, it is also incredibly strong for its weight. This allows us to create lightweight but strong buildings that have a minimal environmental footprint.