
Why isn't bamboo wood a bigger industry? - tomcam
https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-bamboo-wood-a-bigger-worldwide-industry-since-it-grows-so-quickly-and-is-so-strong-Couldnt-it-replace-lumber-and-save-many-trees/answer/Raphaël-du-Sablon?share=1
======
jpatokal
Bamboo isn't going to replace lumber for most permanent uses, but it sure is
handy when you need to put something together in a pinch.

I was once trekking in northern Thailand with some Akha hill tribe guides.
When it was time for dinner, they cut down a large bamboo and within minutes
fashioned essentially a complete dinner service out of it:

* A framework for their overnight hut/lean-to

* A pot for boiling rice

* A frame to hold the pot over an open fire

* Bowls for serving and eating

Crappy pics:

[http://www.patokallio.name/photo/travel/Thailand/ChiangDao/C...](http://www.patokallio.name/photo/travel/Thailand/ChiangDao/Camp_Dinner_Large.JPG)

[http://www.patokallio.name/photo/travel/Thailand/ChiangDao/C...](http://www.patokallio.name/photo/travel/Thailand/ChiangDao/Camp_Base_Large.JPG)

[http://www.patokallio.name/photo/travel/Thailand/ChiangDao/F...](http://www.patokallio.name/photo/travel/Thailand/ChiangDao/Forest_Bamboo_Large.JPG)

(...and obviously the darker pieces of bamboo were reused from previous
camps.)

~~~
OJFord
Wow, those bowls are great, yet so simple. It's amusing to think they'd
probably be about £25 each from John Lewis.

~~~
jermaustin1
I'd buy them, but it would have to be a set for £25, and on sale during one of
the 100 sales they have each year.

Side Note: I don't know why they haven't made their way stateside, they are
one of my favorite department stores. Always clean, friendly staff, toilets
are impeccable (though that might just be a British thing).

~~~
user5994461
John Lewis? It's insanely expensive and the variety of products is risible.

I remember looking at the pans and the fans this summer. There were more
options above £100 than below. There was hardly anything basic and certainly
not at a basic price.

When my vacuum cleaner died last year, I went to look for another one and they
didn't have any except Dyson and its luxury competitors.

~~~
OJFord
It's often cheaper than Amazon for the market segment it serves.

I don't think 'JL has more pans above £100 than below' is any more valid a
complaint than 'Target has more pans below $100 than above'.

(I've been to a Target once, sorry if that's not accurate, but I'm sure you
see what I mean and can substitute something that is!)

~~~
user5994461
I don't know about the luxury market segment, didn't try to compare there. I'm
trying to illustrate that they are not competing on the low to medium range.

Going there a few times only to find nothing and have to buy on Amazon. Ain't
going again.

IMO they're ignoring a big market segment and they are missing out on
customers. Maybe it works out in the city and canary wharf but I doubt it
would fare well in the less affluent countryside.

------
RobertRoberts
Relatives that lived in Japan brought back bamboo stuff to the US, and it all
cracked within a year or so.

The reason was that bamboo does well in wet climates where the moisture in the
air keeps in flexible. (or something like that) But in the US, it's much drier
(most places) than in Japan.

This fits with my experience of bamboo furniture over the years as well. It
becomes brittle and fragile the older it gets. But oak/pine/maple don't seem
to suffer this fate nearly as bad.

~~~
Tor3
I don't doubt what you're saying, but I wonder why my bamboo ski poles don't
crack. I have lots of them, and they've been used every winter for nearly
forty years, from back when I bought them. They're as good as new, still. I
bought all the stock of the last shop selling them at the time, in my student
town, as I didn't want to use fiber or metal poles in the mountains (can't
easily be fixed if they break, while bamboo poles can be fixed if they split,
and, with some tape, can even be prevented from breaking in the first place).

~~~
Laforet
Bamboo is anisotropic like timber, which means that expansion and contraction
caused by drying or temperature variation will happen at different rates along
the tangential, longitutional and radial axis. Crack happens when stress
exceed the tensile strength of the material in one direction. Thus a long and
thin object is less vulnerable to this type of failure as only one axis
undergoes a significant change in size.

In addition, the bamboo ski poles may have been thoroughly dried by kiln
heating and sealed with some type of resin or lacquer to prevent moisture
ingress, especially if they were made to get wet.

~~~
Tor3
I suspect you are correct in your assumptions in the last paragraph, at least
about being kiln heated. That seems very likely. There is also a thin layer of
something, could be resin or lacquer as you suggest. It is definitely not
epoxy though (re. next poster)

~~~
Laforet
The other poster was probably thinking about bamboo fibre-epoxy composite
which is more like fibreglass.

I vaguely remember the sealant is not really food safe, which is why many
bambio utensils still crack after a few years.

------
unknowns
As a wood worker, the answer on the post does agreat job. I will add only one
more point. Wood working in 99% of cases does not lead to deforestation. In
most countries it is hard to buy illegal wood. In South Africa we buy mostly
pine where 2 trees are planted for every one sold. These forestries are
heavily regulated and protected. They are businesses. The deforestation you
usually hear about is in third world countries and not for wood sales but
rather for land gain or things like palm oil.

If you are buying wood from a hardware outlet you can pretty much be
guaranteed that it is safe wood. Many trees are protected by law nowadays.

In most cases, buying wood products actually increases tree mass globally and
decreases pollution.

Buy wood products when you can. You will be planting more trees and decreasing
pollution.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
In terms of product lifecycle, there's no doubt that wood (or bamboo) is a
good choice of material, plants are pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and as
long as what's built is maintained, that CO2 will remain sequestered. Contrast
that with metals (which have to mined and processed, using huge amounts of
energy) or plastics (from fossil fuels, also a headache to dispose of). Not to
mention wood has grain, making it pleasant to look at.

------
hiccuphippo
There's a YouTube channel (0) that uploads videos from a girl in China
building things out of bamboo, watching her work is entrancing:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LTejJnrzGPM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LTejJnrzGPM)

[0] I think the channel is fan made and she actually posts them to a Chinese
social media site.

~~~
forkLding
The channel is hosted by a fan but owned by the girl, she uploads her actual
content to a short-video site

~~~
chillacy
I’m not entirely comfortable with the ethics of this but one great opportunity
is going to be content arbitrage, especially between Chinese internet sites
and then greater world’s. There are some pretty funny memes coming out of Tik
Tok now.

~~~
ssnistfajen
Content arbitrage has been a thing inside China for a few years, particularly
due to the Great Fire Wall blocking a great deal of websites. Quite a few
accounts exist on Wechat and Weibo that aggregate memes and viral videos from
Youtube and Twitter.

A few prominent Chinese video creators have made their way to launch official
Youtube channels. Chinese-language Youtube has been experiencing a boom since
2015 due to increasing numbers of international students living abroad,
proliferation of VPNs, and users in HK/TW.

------
village-idiot
I feel that a lot of concern about replacing wood is misplaced or fails to
properly differentiate between different species of wood harvested in
different locations.

America has a mix of forests for nature preservation, recreation, and lumber
production. The latter are very well managed, with loggers very careful to
replace all the trees they remove with saplings so their sons and daughters
have something to harvest in 50 years. The total result is that the number of
US trees has doubled in 70 years, and were actually back up to 2/3 of the
estimated 1600s tree count. I personally have no qualms about consuming
American harvested hardwood, because I know that it’s part of a successful
forestry program that’s planting more trees than it takes.

Now the one place the above doesn’t apply are South American and African
hardwoods, which are currently not super well managed. So feel free to enjoy
your Oak or Cherry floors, but maybe pass on the Mahogany and Teak.

~~~
Loughla
What part of the states do you live in?

Lumber in the three states in my area is harvested in a completely
unsustainable manner. Loggers will purchase the rights to log from farmers,
and clear-cut every single piece of whatever is popular at the moment (black
walnut right now, Ash and Maple in the 90's). No plan to replant, other than
if nature itself makes a recovery.

~~~
OldHand2018
Are you in the southeast US? A generation ago, so many investors planted trees
that it's all but worthless now once you consider the costs of bringing the
lumber to market. I imagine that a lot of people just want to liquidate their
holdings and get whatever money they can back.

~~~
village-idiot
Either way, current estimates are that we're consuming about 42% of the lumber
that's growing per year. I'm personally ok with this.

------
londons_explore
This article makes no mention of biomass per acre when farmed.

As a C4 photosynthesis plant, bamboo presumably grows more biomass per year
than other trees.

If true, that would seem significant enough to outweigh many of the
disadvantages.

~~~
ianai
Iirc, there’s a bamboo tree that grows very fast and has been considered for
carbon sequestration. But the problem is, as with all trees, the carbon isn’t
locked away from the atmosphere. It also takes up valuable farm land as they
need something more like marshland than drier, more common land.

~~~
barry-cotter
You can make charcoal from it which generates some heat from burning but
doesn’t release near as much of the carbon. Then you can treat the charcoal to
make terra preta, which is a soil additive that lasts centuries and encourages
soil formation and carbon retention itself.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta)

~~~
gdubs
Commonly known as “biochar”, particularly among permaculturists:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar)

------
m_eiman
The list of uses is missing the best one: clothing!

Bamboo fabric is very soft and comfortable, if you haven't tried it yet you
should!

Downside: it doesn't last as long as cotton, and takes a bit longer to dry
after washing.

~~~
ams6110
It's also missing scaffolding. Bamboo is often used to make construction
scaffolding in areas where it is abundant.

~~~
skilled
I can confirm on scaffolding. Having traveled in Asia a fair share, I have
come across some _interesting_ creations with bamboo scaffolding. It's
incredible to see just how much the material can hold above itself without
breaking.

------
vram22
Bamboo, coconut, neem and maybe banana are considered "wonder trees or
plants", IIRC, because each has many uses. Banana maybe a bit less than the
other three. Also garlic for health (neem is known for health uses but also
has many uses).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azadirachta_indica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azadirachta_indica)

In India neem cake (residue after extracting oil from neem seeds) is fed to
cattle and used as an organic fertilizer (IIRC, as are some other oilseed
cakes, some of them are used as feed in aquaculture too), fresh young neem
leaves are made into a paste/curry and eaten in some states (good for
purifying the blood and skin and getting rid of worms), neem twigs are used as
toothbrushes (the germicidal properties help), neem oil is applied on cattle
(and sometimes humans use it) to keep away flies and insects, etc. etc.

For banana, apart from eating the ripe fruit, in southern states at least, the
raw fruit is also cooked, the flowers and stems are also eaten as vegetables
in curries (dry or wet), the leaves are used as plates for eating (thrown
after one use), etc.

It's really amazing the number of different uses that many plants and trees
have been put to, traditionally. I read a lot about this for Indian plants in
a government research institute's publications some time ago. Fuel, food,
timber, other construction material, medicine (both external and internal),
are some of the uses known.

~~~
vram22
Moringa (drumstick) and jackfruit are two others.

------
raverbashing
Maybe they should focus on the carbon capture aspects (which are remarkable,
bamboo grows _fast_ ) and try to work around the other issues

Does bamboo aggregate exists?

Though cellulose to fuel is kinda promising and still something to be cracked
(pun intended), maybe it will never work.

------
specialist
Thank you for sharing this. I have been wondering about bamboo's utility for
paper & packaging, to perhaps displace some plastic. This article has a better
roundup of the state of things.

FWIW, Last time I asked about this, I found Ecoplanet Bamboo Group is trying
to address some of the short-comings:

[http://www.ecoplanetbamboo.com](http://www.ecoplanetbamboo.com)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecoplanet_Bamboo_Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecoplanet_Bamboo_Group)

[http://www.ecoplanetbamboo.com/fsc-
certification](http://www.ecoplanetbamboo.com/fsc-certification)

------
xte
IMO bamboo can't be a bigger thing than wood simply because:

\- bamboo cultivation came from not-much-developed countries, so not much good
for us and not much easy to develop for them;

\- bamboo duration, even with not so cheap treatments, is far less than the
wood;

\- bamboo fire resistance is very low, even with not so cheap treatments;

There is a trend in the western for bamboo simply because we consume more wood
than natural regeneration and we need cheaper alternatives but this trend is
really limited to consumer stuff, not structural/real architecture one as many
do in some Asian and south-American countries...

------
village-idiot
I’m not a big fan of bamboo as a hardwood for all the reasons listed above.
But the stuff does make some rather lovely, but expensive, flyrods.

------
DennisP
In warm, wet climates, it appears to work pretty well to make buildings out of
bamboo, if you leave it looking like bamboo instead of turning it into lumber.
For example: [https://qz.com/367284/spectacular-bamboo-
architecture/](https://qz.com/367284/spectacular-bamboo-architecture/)

------
blt
Is there a pressing need to replace wood? I think, at least in the USA, most
wooden goods are made from cheap soft woods that grow quickly, and can
basically be treated as an agricultural commodity. Are trees inefficient at
converting light/water/nitrogen to cellulose?

~~~
Klathmon
Well i think it's more that bamboo grows significantly faster than even the
cheapest woods.

FFS some species of bamboo can grow over an inch an hour!

~~~
vram22
Yes, I don't have data (can be looked up), but I've read that some bamboo
species grow really fast.

~~~
vram22
There's also this interesting and devastating phenomenon I read about a while
ago: in some places where bamboo grows (IIRC, one or more of the north-eastern
Indian states, like Assam, is one of them), there are periodic famines or at
least great shortages of food, and hence human deaths or migration, due to
rats breeding like mad due to bamboo's flowering (which the rats eat - could
be flowers or seeds) or something, every some number of years, and then when
the bamboo food is over, they invade human habitation to continue getting
food. Not sure if it is a solved problem yet.

Update: Just googled about it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mautam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mautam)

------
failrate
I have a bamboo plant(s) in my back yard. I frequently harvest a few pieces
here and there for projects that need light, flexible materials. Very
convenient.

------
imhelpingu
You would think quora learned their lesson about forcing uses to login just to
browse the site after they got hacked. Apparently not.

------
mylesmcginley
Great Question... and one I think about a lot. I work for a company called
BamCore -- we make prefab home materials out of bamboo (wall systems for right
now, but hoping to expand our product portfolio to include the entire building
envelope). I have tried to outline the below with reasons why _today_ bamboo
is still considered niche in the west, and why I am so bullish on it breaking
that mold in the future.

1\. Supply of the good stuff is limited. There are thousands of species of
bamboo, but only a handful are good for creating traditional buildings and
other highly valuable commercial products. Bamboo forests make up about 3-4%
of total forest cover (30-40mil ha), and the majority of it is in India and
China, which means western access to the fiber is limited, and access to the
really valuable fiber, is even more limited. 2\. Knowledge diffusion has been
limited. Because of Bamboo's geography, its mainly used in the east, and is
often seen as a "poor man's" timber... an unfortuante stereotype we are trying
to get around. Also, if you ask anyone what they think about bamboo in the
west, they will invariably say something like "oh, we had bamboo in our
backyard and we just couldn't get rid of it!!" Running bamboo, different than
clumping bamboo, are more common in the temperate countries in the west and
give the fiber a reputation for being rather frustrating... 3\. Western timber
companies create very tall barriers to entry. Companies like Weyerhaueser are
massive... they, unfortunately, could rather easily shut down a budding bamboo
plantation.

For all intents and purposes, bamboo is a cottage industry in most western
countries. Yes, the bamboo utensils, plates, and high-end flooring are cool,
but until there is a truly amazing commercial opportunity for us to showcase
bamboo fiber's quite amazing properties (tensile and flexural strength in
particular), timber will always be cheaper, and easier.

Now, why I think the tides may change for bamboo (particularly the Guadua,
Dendrocalamus Asper, Bambusa Bambos and Textilis species).

1\. Bamboo is much better than wood at sequestering carbon. over the past
year, I, and a team of researchers, have undertaken a life cycle comparison of
wood and bamboo's carbon sequestration effectiveness when productizing the
fiber. The results were astounding and were somewhat unexpected. Bamboo's
incredibly short time to maturity (6-7 years) and annual growth dynamics make
it a far better sequestration engine than wood, which normally takes between
25 and 70 years. It also turns out that clear-cutting, the most popular form
of harvesting wood fiber, is actually rather catastrophic for carbon flowing
from growth to captured in product. In fact, on average only about 35% of the
carbon that a tree stand captures makes it into a product (pulp, osb, paper,
etc). Bamboo is never clear cut, because it grows rhizomally (its technically
a grass). And therefore keeps a much higher amount of the carbon sequestered
when being harvested and productized. The world seems to be somewhat waking up
to the threat of climate change (unfortunately our president is still
asleep)... we hope bamboo might be able to ride some of those tailwinds into
becoming a more mainstream fiber source. There are also a few reforestation
projects worldwide that contemplate bamboo projects.

2\. There are smart people working on making bamboo fiber more popular.
Besides BamCore, there have popped up a bunch of different bamboo-based
companies in the US, and there are 100,000s of acres of bamboo being planted
currently in Alabama by a company called Resource Fiber.

3\. bamboo tech is improving rapidly. BamCore has developed a few different
patented processes to make the bamboo stem into walls. Other companies are
working on composites that would be as light as carbon fiber and completely
bullet proof. The knowledge of how to use the fiber is still so young compared
to wood, the only way to go is up.

4\. Building and energy laws are going green fast. California and other states
are adopting very green policy goals over the coming decades. BamCore's prefab
wall system is already code commpliant, and the bamboo's natural thermal, air
transmissivity, acoustic, tensile, compressive, flexural (etc etc) make it fit
well with the goals of policy makers.

But, we shall see how it all pans out.

Resources: [https://bamcore.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BamCore-
and-G...](https://bamcore.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BamCore-and-Global-
Warming_2017-06-19.pdf)
[https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/ne_gtr343.pdf](https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/ne_gtr343.pdf)
[https://bamcore.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/attachment-1....](https://bamcore.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/attachment-1.pdf)

------
hammock
Rubberwood. Rubberwood has seen huge growth in use in the last couple decades,
particularly in furniture.

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natch
Because it splinters and falls apart.

------
dominicr
TL;DR answer: because they're different things.

Using bamboo for building houses tends to result in using different building
methods & architecture. Which can look amazing (see
[http://ibuku.com/](http://ibuku.com/)). But I doubt it'd make sense to use
bamboo to build my house in snowy Norway, rather than locally sourced lumber.

~~~
simias
Your TL;DR doesn't do the answer justice IMO, especially the "Lumber" section.
It's not just that they're different, it's that lumber is more versatile
because it's more easy to shape it to fit your design.

I don't know anything about woodworking (or bamboo-working for that matter)
but if I am to trust this Quora answer it seems that bamboo is only really
good if you want bamboo-shaped elements. Otherwise you need highly processed
bamboo to emulate the versatile lumber boards:

>The process is fairly involved. Typically, bamboo is harvested, leached in
water to remove starches (so it does not rot so quickly) or boiled in hydrogen
peroxide (or both), dried, and baked at high temperature to darken its color.
Sliced into thin strips, it is arranged in layers, usually with some degree of
weaving to improve strength, mixed with resins, and then subject to high
temperature and pressure to set the epoxy.[10] The resulting “board” is then
stained and sealed, much like a regular hardwood floor.

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egberts1
TL;DR:?Black liquor used in leaching bamboo of its high silica and its
absorption rate of that silica requires expensive chemical.

