Bamboo-Hugger

Environmentalists are often called Tree-Huggers.  Sometimes it's not meant to be a compliment, but I always take it to be one.  I love trees and I'm not ashamed to hug them. In public.  I'm all about Tree Public Displays of Affection...TPDA for short.

But like many environmental scientists, I don't think the massive tree plantation drives that have been taking place all over the world to repair our devastation are the best route to go.  Of course we need to replace trees in deforested areas.  But we also need some more efficient carbon sequestering help, and trees aren't the plant for that job.

Trees do help in offsetting carbon emission, but in the battle between carbon emission and offsetting, they are slowly but surely losing out. How so? Well, we ourselves are partly to blame for that. The rate at which we, and the lifestyles we lead, lead to CO2 emission, is way more than which the trees can offset them.

We are also responsible for this losing battle because we failed to look beyond the conventional fast growing trees and identify a much better candidate for carbon offsetting—bamboo. That's right. Research has proved that bamboo generates 35% more oxygen than any other plant. It is also the fastest growing.

There are other factors as well that make bamboo a worthier candidate than other trees. For once, it can grow in almost any habitat. It has been said that bamboo can tolerate rainfall and precipitation ranging from 30 inches to 250 inches. Not all trees are as adaptable, and that poses a problem.

In their haste, humans have made the mistake of selecting rapidly growing trees from different parts of the world to ramp up their greening drives. As I pointed out, not all plants are as adaptable as bamboo, and the results of such myopic decisions have been drastic. We now have vast tracts of eucalyptus trees on lands that were alien to them only a few years back.

Eucalyptus, which is a native of Australia, is a fast growing tree, but eucalyptus monoculture for the purpose of conservation is an environmental disaster. Unfortunately, this disaster has become much too common because of our decisions. The solution? A faster-growing, more efficient carbon sequestering machine: Bamboo.

Embrace a life where bamboo has a bigger role to play. From bamboo fiber to bamboo fuel, from ply-boo (as in plywood) to paper made of bamboo pulp... there is a world of things you can do with bamboo without compromising your lifestyle.

Bamboo planting accomplishes two related goals:  it's a fast, economical grower, so it sequesters carbon better than trees do, and it is a versatile fiber, which saves trees from being cut for commercial use.

You can use bamboo for construction and many other purposes. How about this? Bamboo is up to 100% harder than red wood and up to 80% harder than maple. In fact, it has a tensile strength better than mild steel. It also does not swell or shrink like most hardwood. When a violent earthquake hit Costa Rica in 1992, only the bamboo houses from the National Bamboo Project stood their ground.

Bamboo is also a savior... of the rainforests that is. In Costa Rica, thousands of bamboo houses are built each year from only 60 hectares of bamboo plantation. If they were using timber, they would have had to clear out 500 hectares of rainforest for the purpose.

Last, but not the least, bamboo is a renewable resource. You can harvest it within 3 to 5 years, as opposed to 10 to 20 years in case of other hardwood trees. With so many qualities and possibilities that this plant offers, is it a surprise that it is being hailed as the next big thing in reducing carbon emissions?

Become a Bamboo-Hugger!  Bamboo is very huggable and very worthy of our devotion.