WHY BAMBOO? 11 BENEFITS OF BAMBOO!

Bamboo is a naturally renewable raw material with a wide range of use and application. It is a special plant with a series of health and environmental benefits. This special plant is hypoallergenic, offers protection against bacteria, soft & tender, possesses absorbent properties, and so on. This makes bamboo have great economic value in different industries.

1. The Fastest Growing Plant in the World

Bamboo isn’t a tree but a herb – a subfamily of bambusoidae of the family Poaceae (grasses) – and the fastest growing plant on earth with a growth rate of 1/3 times than of trees.

It isn’t rocket science the division, elongation, and enlargement of the meristem cells are responsible for the height and thickness of plants. The position of the meristem varies in plants. Some meristems are located at the stem tip with some at the side of the cambium of plants.

There are also some meristems at the root and most importantly some are located at the base of each stem internode. These intermediate meristems have a strong splitting ability which makes cells divide vigorously and causes rapid elongation under the humid and warm weather in the spring.

With this, every one of the bamboo meristems grows simultaneously and as such, leads to rapid growth. This makes bamboo more sustainable than trees. So bamboo is the ideal raw material, especially in the papermaking industry.

2. Absorb more CO2 and produce more O2

The greenhouse effect should be no news by now as it has been the major environmental talk over the years. To counter this greenhouse effect, it’s important to effectively balance the proportion of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our environment. And this is where bamboo comes into play. 

Bamboo is said to give out 35% more oxygen than trees while also absorbing more carbon dioxide. In fact, a hectare of the bamboo plant absorbs 12 tons of carbon dioxide. 

3. Bamboo Effectively Repairs and Protects the Soil

Human activities such as deforestation, overgrazing, burning, and backward farming techniques negatively impact the soil. These activities are usually the cause of dreadful natural disasters like floods, desertification, and landslides. Thankfully, bamboo can effectively repair degraded soils and also keep the soil in quality condition.

Bamboo is endowed with a well-developed root system coupled with a large rhizome network. This root actively remains in the ground after bamboo has been harvested and can also retain a large amount of water. This in addition to the soil nutrients maintenance properties of the roots, gives you the perfect plant for the prevention of desertification. 

Also, bamboo leaves are rich in soil repairing and enhancing nutrients that help replenish lost nutrients in damaged soils when they fall on the ground. Hence, it is a nice idea to plant bamboo on degraded land to help prevent desertification and other natural disasters.

4. Bamboo products 100% Biodegradable

One of the major environmental impacts of bamboo is all of its products are biodegradable. This means, they effortlessly decompose into soil nutrients with time. This is unlike most other products that cause land pollution and waste lots of resources during the recycling process.

Let’s take bamboo toilet paper as an example.100% bamboo tissue is biodegradable and as such friendly to septic tank systems. Also, it doesn’t require much water and other resources during recycling, making it economically sound.

5. High Renewability and Yield

One of the downsides of trees being used as a raw material is they need to be replanted once cut down. This problem is eliminated with bamboo as it grows quickly after harvesting it (provided it is not uprooted). In fact, bamboo can be harvested annually after it has reached about 7 years of maturation. 

This is all thanks to the regeneration properties of the underground roots that allow it to grow new visible shoots a few days after harvesting. In some pretty short species of bamboo, the regenerating plant might grow as tall as the mother plant 10 days after they were unearthed. Hence, proper cultivation of bamboo doesn’t only protect the environment but also promotes the regeneration of bamboo.

To help quantify the importance and advantage of bamboo as a raw material over trees, note that a hectare of bamboo forest produces about 15 times more raw materials than its tree equivalent.

6. Reduce deforestation

With the number of industries benefiting from trees especially the papermaking industry, a whopping 13 million hectares of forest are laid bare every year. To put it more realistically as a fun fact, 13 hectares (32 million acres) is just about the size of Nicaragua or Greece.

Now, substituting wood with bamboo as the go-to raw material saves the forests and the environment from deforestation and its effects. This is because bamboo is being used to produce the majority of products manufactured with trees and other unsustainable raw materials. Some of these products include bamboo toilet paper, bamboo paper cups, building materials, and bamboo toothbrushes.

7. Bamboo Products Have a Realistic Market Growth

With the renewability and super-growth feature of bamboo, it’s no surprise its products have a pretty objective market growth. Research carried out by Grandview research showed that as of 2018, the bamboo market size globally is valued at USD 68.8 billion and is expected to have exponential growth at a CAGR of 5.0% from 2019 to 2025.

The outcome of this research is notable with the increasing emergence of many eco-friendly bamboo products in Europe, the United States, Britain, and other notable markets. A case study is bamboo toilet paper which is the trending search amongst toilet papers in the last five years. Hence, as well as its health and environmental importance, bamboo also offers economic advantages.

8. Bamboo Fibre Possesses Moisture Absorption and Air Permeability Characteristics

One of the user-friendly features of bamboo is its moisture absorption and air permeability. When the absorption characteristics of bamboo were studied under a 2000 times magnified microscope, it was shown to have a cross-section full of oval pores, with strong capillary effect, concave and convex, highly hollow and most importantly can effectively absorb and evaporate water.

Similarly, the moisture absorption and air permeability of bamboo fiber are proven to be the most effective amongst five all-natural fibers. This moisture absorption is especially palpable in bamboo toilet paper as it absorbs water quickly and dissolves in no time.

9. Antibacterial and Bacteriostatic Characteristics

Bamboo is one of the plants with high antibacterial characteristics. It has constituents known as “Bamboo Quinone” which is highly fatal to bacteria. This gives it (bamboo fiber) natural anti-mite, anti-insect, anti-odor, bacteriostatic and anti-allergic properties. The bacteriostatic characteristics are reflected in Newland Bamboo’s toilet paper report.