Are You Bamboozled by Bamboo Hype?
An Informed Shopper Is a Smart Buyer
Bamboo products, particularly fabrics and flooring, are enjoying quite the eco-hype these days, for some very good reasons. Bamboo is fast-growing, in some cases growing as much as three feet per day. 
It requires little if any fertilizers or pesticides, it reproduces itself without the need to plow and plant, and its cultivation, processing, and distribution provide hundreds of millions of jobs in China alone. The fabrics made from bamboo fibers can be soft and supple, non-irritating to the skin, and temperature-regulating because of their wicking properties. Flooring made from bamboo can be strikingly beautiful and cost less than hardwood floors.
However, bamboo products may not be as green or eco-friendly as they appear.
Although bamboo may be a significantly sustainable resource, the way it is processed commercially and then distributed can question its smartness, at least for now. Large-scale fabric manufacturing requires the use of toxic chemicals, and flooring may be constructed using formaldehyde-based adhesives. As for distribution, nearly all commercially available products begin with bamboo harvested and processed in China, resulting in a huge fossil fuel cost to move the processed bamboo around the globe.
Before you make that commitment to bamboo flooring, or even bamboo fabric pajamas, dispel the myths and arm yourself with the facts by linking to these excellent resources.
Questions To Ask Before You Buy
What chemicals are used in processing bamboo for fabrics, and what are the known hazards of those chemicals?
What are some of the socio-economic concerns behind bamboo fabric manufacturing that make some people question how green bamboo clothing is?
How is bamboo processed into flooring, and what’s the truth about its durability compared to traditional hardwood flooring?
How green is bamboo flooring, and why?
In a nutshell, what are the pros and cons of bamboo flooring?
Just for fun, is the word “bamboozle” related to bamboo?
Photo by tracyzhang at sxc.hu
May 24th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Wow. Thank you for dissecting an issue that I had never even considered before. I’ll definitely think twice before assuming something’s “green” just because popular culture’s been telling me that it is!
May 26th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
The Chinese managed for how many years without all the chemicals didn’t they? How did they do it?
May 28th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Kathe, the sad fact is that processing bamboo without chemicals is a time- and labor-intensive process, not conducive to big business enterprise. Non-chemical processing is still done in China and in other parts of the world, but only on a small scale.
May 30th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Thank you Sally, for such an informative and well written article, and also for the excellent links. There is a fair bit of bamboo in the North Eastern parts of India. The story there is much the same as in China. The locals use every part of the bamboo very effectively and in a non polluting manner - as food, as utensils and cuttlery, as a fabric, for fencing, flooring, roofs and walls, for village security and making animal traps. But commercial exploitation of this resource is polluting the environment including rivers and streams with strong chemical residue and waste.
On a lighter note, reading this blog reminded me of an old song from a bygone era - The House of Bamboo by Earl Grant, I think.