New Bamboo

What do you think of when you hear the word bamboo? Pandas? Backyard makeover shows? Or maybe even flooring? It’s probably not fabric.

For me its scaffolding. There was a time in my life when I was on a plane going somewhere almost every week – and everywhere I went, I would turn on CNN*. CNN was like a kind of English speaking buddy during my travels, and it would almost without fail have on a documentary about bamboo scaffolding. It was kind of interesting the first few times.



Thank goodness for mini-bars.

There are over 1000 documented uses of bamboo. Most recently, there has been a lot of hoo-hah in the environmental world about bamboo fabric as the ‘new cotton’.

Bamboo fabric is a natural textile made from the pulp of the bamboo grass. Bamboo fabric has been growing in popularity because it is light and strong, has excellent wicking properties, is anti-bacterial and its production has less environmental impact than most textile fibre production. Bamboo fibre has been found to be approximately 60% more water absorbent than cotton.

What do we mean by less environmental impact? As a grass bamboo has a natural resistance to diseases – which means less pesticides. That's good. It can be grown in both tropical and sub-tropical climates, providing a fast way to re-green and regenerate areas degraded by deforestation or over farming. Anyone who has ever planted bamboo in their backyard knows it grows quickly – seemingly endlessly in fact. You chop it back and it grows again and again. The type of bamboo used for making fabric, commonly known as Moso, can reach a mature height of 75 feet in just 45 to 60 days. This means more output from less resource.

So bamboo is uber cool. You can now buy bamboo towels, sheets, T-Shirts, socks – the list goes on. I have bought a few of these – my favourite are my Santens towels. I offered a bamboo towel to a visiting friend one day and they asked ‘Won’t that be a bit scratchy?’ Well, shouldn't we suffer a little to do the good thing environmentally?

No need. My bamboo towels are really soft, and I just touch my wet skin and the water disappears. That’s the 60% more absorbent thing. I really liked their colour range too. I admit they were a lot more expensive than equivalent cotton towels, and they do get shipped from Europe – so they lose some of their environmental cred on the trip. Unfortunately there will always be a level of shipping involved in Australia – bamboo is not grown in Australia for fabric production as yet. But for me they were a good investment – and certainly a better option than traditional cotton towels.

Todae.com.au and The Bamboo Fabric Store are a good place to start for bamboo fabric items online, a quick Google will give you a good list of suppliers. A few things to be aware of, most bamboo fabric is mixed with some cotton. So where possible, try to ensure that the cotton is also coming from a reliable source. There is a lot out there – I will be checking out some more bamboo products in the next few weeks.

Isn’t it great that we have found a fabulous new fabric that will save the world?

Archaeologists have found bamboo weaving relics 5000 years old at the ruins of a village in Xian. That means that bamboo fabric has been around longer than the pyramids in Giza.

The cool new bamboo.

*or it might have been BBC World News – hey they are practically the same anyway
Sources:
Bamboo History
The Bamboo Fabric Store
Style Limited

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