Pandering to the green consumer
Food no more: An adult panda eats bamboo leaves at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Sichuan province, China. The panda's favourite foodstuff was once cleared for farmland _ now farmers are racing to replant it. Picture: EPA
Saturday, August 23, 2008
BAMBOO is frequently proclaimed as the world's most renewable material: it's naturally pest-resistant, grows incredibly fast and can actually help rebuild eroded soil. It takes just three or four years to go from seed to harvest and because the root network is so big, you don't even need to replant — it just shoots right back up again. Bamboo, therefore, can be grown without any chemical fertilisers or pesticides. Alas, this doesn't mean it always is.
China is still the only country that grows bamboo on a commercial scale, and as it becomes an increasingly lucrative cash crop, farmers are starting to grow it as a mono-crop. That in itself reduces biodiversity and can lead to an increase in pests. This in turn means pesticide use becomes necessary.
There's also some evidence that farmers are using chemical fertilisers to increase their yields. There's no reason why they shouldn't: there are no set standards or environmental guidelines in China for the growing of bamboo and clearly their concern is to get as large a crop as possible for their money. Unfortunately, though, this has an environmental cost.
Farmers are also now beginning to clear natural forestland in order to grow more bamboo. It seems rather ironic that much of the blame for endangering the giant pandas of China can be traced to farmers and landowners clearing bamboo forest for farmland — now they're clearing it to grow back some bamboo. Too late, alas, for many pandas.
This isn't to say that companies using bamboo fibres aren't aware of these issues. They are no doubt doing their very best to avoid them by seeking guarantees that the bamboo used is grown entirely naturally. But the Chinese production system is hardly known for its transparency and it must be difficult to get any cast-iron guarantees.
Despite the potential drawbacks of bamboo as a crop, there's no doubt that up to this point in the supply chain, it's a great deal more sustainable than cotton or many other commercially available alternative fabrics. Where it all gets a bit tricky is in the production of the fabric itself.
Many of the companies using bamboo fibres say they are producing bamboo organically, using processing that does not involve harmful bleaches. There doesn't seem to be an awful lot of proof, though. The Soil Assocation doesn't currently give certification to any bamboo clothing. A spokeswoman, Sarah Compson, explained: "The production of bamboo would fall under our perennial crop standards so in theory we could certify the crop — but the problem is the processing. The process needed to break down the bamboo to make the fibres is very similar to that used to make viscose and we've yet to see a method that would come anywhere close to complying with our production standards."
There are actually two methods of extracting fabric from the bamboo plant. The first is mechanical. This involves crushing the plants into a mush, using natural enzymes to break it down and then combing out the fibres and spinning them into a yarn. The fabric produced this way resembles linen (indeed, it is often called bamboo linen). This method does have some environmental drawbacks but could potentially be sustainable. However, because it is labour-intensive, it's expensive, and the fabric produced is not soft enough to be used in the bamboo fibre underwear that is increasingly popular.
The second method is chemical. The plants are cooked in a cocktail of chemical solvents — primarily sodium hydroxide (lye, or caustic soda, as it's more commonly known) and carbon disulfide. Both are known to be harmful to human health, and sodium hydroxide can harm aquatic life when released into the water supply..
The lesson, therefore, is that until the production process becomes both more transparent and more sustainable, it might be best to keep a watchful eye on bamboo.
Observer
China is still the only country that grows bamboo on a commercial scale, and as it becomes an increasingly lucrative cash crop, farmers are starting to grow it as a mono-crop. That in itself reduces biodiversity and can lead to an increase in pests. This in turn means pesticide use becomes necessary.
There's also some evidence that farmers are using chemical fertilisers to increase their yields. There's no reason why they shouldn't: there are no set standards or environmental guidelines in China for the growing of bamboo and clearly their concern is to get as large a crop as possible for their money. Unfortunately, though, this has an environmental cost.
Farmers are also now beginning to clear natural forestland in order to grow more bamboo. It seems rather ironic that much of the blame for endangering the giant pandas of China can be traced to farmers and landowners clearing bamboo forest for farmland — now they're clearing it to grow back some bamboo. Too late, alas, for many pandas.
This isn't to say that companies using bamboo fibres aren't aware of these issues. They are no doubt doing their very best to avoid them by seeking guarantees that the bamboo used is grown entirely naturally. But the Chinese production system is hardly known for its transparency and it must be difficult to get any cast-iron guarantees.
Despite the potential drawbacks of bamboo as a crop, there's no doubt that up to this point in the supply chain, it's a great deal more sustainable than cotton or many other commercially available alternative fabrics. Where it all gets a bit tricky is in the production of the fabric itself.
Many of the companies using bamboo fibres say they are producing bamboo organically, using processing that does not involve harmful bleaches. There doesn't seem to be an awful lot of proof, though. The Soil Assocation doesn't currently give certification to any bamboo clothing. A spokeswoman, Sarah Compson, explained: "The production of bamboo would fall under our perennial crop standards so in theory we could certify the crop — but the problem is the processing. The process needed to break down the bamboo to make the fibres is very similar to that used to make viscose and we've yet to see a method that would come anywhere close to complying with our production standards."
There are actually two methods of extracting fabric from the bamboo plant. The first is mechanical. This involves crushing the plants into a mush, using natural enzymes to break it down and then combing out the fibres and spinning them into a yarn. The fabric produced this way resembles linen (indeed, it is often called bamboo linen). This method does have some environmental drawbacks but could potentially be sustainable. However, because it is labour-intensive, it's expensive, and the fabric produced is not soft enough to be used in the bamboo fibre underwear that is increasingly popular.
The second method is chemical. The plants are cooked in a cocktail of chemical solvents — primarily sodium hydroxide (lye, or caustic soda, as it's more commonly known) and carbon disulfide. Both are known to be harmful to human health, and sodium hydroxide can harm aquatic life when released into the water supply..
The lesson, therefore, is that until the production process becomes both more transparent and more sustainable, it might be best to keep a watchful eye on bamboo.
Observer
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