SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH BAMBOO

Bamboo is the poster child of the sustainability movement because it is incredibly ecologically sustainable.        

1. Bamboo is one of the most renewable materials on the planet. It regenerates quicker than other plants and is one of the fastest growing plant species. Since bamboo is a grass, each plant sends up new poles every year. This means that if the bamboo clump is mindfully harvested, it regenerates without replanting and does not cause a complete loss of green cover, such as when trees are felled.

2. Bamboo is a super carbon sink. Bamboo incorporates 7-30% more carbon than other fast-growing wood species.

3. Bamboo controls soil erosion. Bamboo’s underground root and rhizome system create a ‘mesh’ which holds the soil together and reduces soil runoff. It is ideal for protecting mountain slopes from land-slides and riverbanks from erosion.

4. Bamboo rehabilitates degraded land. Its rhizome network captures water, and its leaf fall creates mulch—which retains moisture and rehabilitates soil.

5. Bamboo purifies water. It absorbs high amounts of nitrogen which makes it a good solution to treat wastewater.  

All of these factors have inspired an explosion of bamboo-based design. However, most of this design uses industrially-processed bamboo—where the bamboo pole is broken down into smaller components and then pasted together to form standardized forms, boards and panels. These industrial bamboo avatars generally use a lot of glue for lamination—which is often formaldehyde-based and very unsustainable. Industrially laminated bamboo composites are also more difficult to deal with during their end-of-life phase.

Industrial bamboo value-chains diminish the value added by bamboo-working producers, forcing them lower in the bamboo value-addition chain. From being involved in everything from growing to skilled-assembly in traditional value chains, they become deskilled primary production-line workers in industrial value chains.

This is ironic, because bamboo inherently has the potential to impact the socio-economic and cultural sustainability of marginalized bamboo-working communities. It is inherently a pro-poor material.  

1. Cultivating bamboo can be done by the poorest of the poor. Unlike agricultural crops, bamboo does not depend on rain-fed farming. Its shoots emerge at the onset of the rain, which makes it less vulnerable to erratic rainfall and climate change. This makes it an ideal choice for small farmers without access to irrigation.

2. Working with bamboo can be done by the poorest of the poor. Unlike wood’s radial fibres, bamboo’s fibres are linear. This means it can be processed by the low-cost and simple tools available to marginalized communities.

3. Women can process bamboo easily. Since bamboo is light-weight it more easily processed by women using minimal equipment.

4. Bamboo is part of traditional indigenous knowledge. Bamboo has been widely handcrafted by indigenous communities and bamboo-working processes are part of traditional and indigenous knowledge.

5. Bamboo adds to small-farmer security. Bamboo can be harvested as required. Unlike agricultural crops, it does not provide a one-time flush income. Since it is a perennial plant, it can be harvested on demand during lean periods and crises. This allows small-farmers to plan and save adding to their economic security. 

At Rhizome, we aim to leverage ALL of bamboo’s potential for sustainability—not just the factors that dove-tail with ecological sustainability. We constantly endeavour to allow producers greater participation in the making of our products including during our design phase. We have a LOT of strategies for achieving holistic sustainability through bamboo, but here are some of our thumb-rules:

1. We ensure our pieces are made from clean material. This means we use non-forest bamboo and we trace the origin of our bamboo. The materials we use apart from bamboo are up-cycled, repurposed, recyclable and renewable. Our material is ethically-sourced, it is as local as possible, and we source it at a fair rate from small vendors and not from big corporates. This ensures that the money we pay out goes to sending kids to school, and allows women to go to doctors—and not to lining the purses of already-wealthy conglomerates.

2. Our pieces are handcrafted by traditional and contemporary craftspeople. We try and keep skills alive and use traditional methods in contemporary ways to keep tradition dynamic. If a non-traditional would-be crafts-person wants to learn handcrafting, we teach them in an apprentice-mode, since we are a learning studio. We aim to provide livelihoods. We therefore don't use machines as far as possible unless it is to aid the human hand. We are not anti-machine and not Luddites, but love the handmade and are more Arts and Craft peeps.

3. We aim to create emotionally-durable design which stays around longer as you love it. We design classic pieces which are often whimsical and contemporary. We want our pieces to tug at your heart strings and become future heirlooms.

4. We take as long as we need to develop something-we are as slow design as they come. We don't design as per mainstream trends or seasons. We want to shake the giant machine which controls the design world. We do love the idea of trends and are tremendously inspired by design movements, but we do it when we think it is appropriate-not because we believe we have to. 

5. We design for customization. We often create unique pieces just for you, because we want our clients to love our pieces and don't want them to end up in a landfill anytime soon. So, we customize and welcome collaborative design.

All in all, we use clean material (ecologically sustainable), we ethically produce through our team of craftspeople whose skill sets we build constantly (socially sustainable), we use indigenous knowledge as a starting point for our work (culturally sustainable) and we aim to provide livelihoods and share profits (economically sustainable). Bamboo is integral to doing all of these because it is our vehicle to holistic sustainability.