Why should we concern our selves with building with Bamboo in this age when we have so many excellent industrially produced building materials? Steel Glass, Aluminium, Titanium and so on and so forth? Because…..

…….Bamboo is Sustainable!

Bamboo is an enduring versatile and highly renewable resource -- a prime example of sustainability - with respect to both plant itself and also in its use as a building material as is evident from the following:

Its impact on environment and ecology is summarized below.

• Soil leaching - No danger for bamboo as it often grows in mixed cultures.
• Harvesting it.
• At every stage of the plants growth there is a use for bamboo
• In most cases the environmentally damaging transport is unnecessary, since bamboo grows almost everywhere.
• Due to its rapid growth, the yield (Weight/Acre/year) is up to 25 times higher than that of timer.

In the Asian countries, Bamboo definitely emerges as the “Future Alternative for Wood”. Consider this:

If one quarter of plywood needs were to be covered by BMP (Bamboo Mat Boards)- then some 4,00,000 cu meters of logs or 11,000 hectares of forest would be spared each year. Equally important that it would create jobs for some 1,200 poor Indian villagers.

• Bamboo plant produces a lot of Biomass – the highest value in the plant realm.Depending on the type, location and ambient climate the annual growth rate is 15-25 tonnes of harvestable culms i.e 6-12 tonnes of air-dried biomass.
• Bamboo is a self generating raw material – with production continuining after individual canes have been harvested, as the new shoots appear each year.
• Bamboo crops can also be used as wind protection in farming to stabilize river banks and forested hillsides and several other such uses.
• The Bamboo plant can help to purify the air. It is also one of the top rated plants tested for the removal of benzene, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).
• As Bamboo can tolerate diverse soil and moisture regime, it has the ability to stitch and repair degraded areas, can converse soil and moisture and draught proofing.
• Its foliage shelter topsoil from the onslaught of tropical downpours while leaf litters (up to 10cm in a year) also cushions the soil from the impact of rain and eases the soil’s absorption and retention of moisture.
• Bamboo is used for watershed protection (the plants vast underground rhizome network may over up to 100 sq.m around one bamboo clump)