Bamboo Vs. Plastic... Is Bamboo Really More Eco-Friendly?

Plastic waste. It is everywhere. Our throw-away approach to plastic is causing us huge problems. With many alternatives now around, let's consider bamboo. And ask ourselves, "bamboo versus plastic - is bamboo an eco-friendly alternative?".

Plastic is a Global Problem

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Plastic waste is a global problem
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Plastic is a useful material because of its many advantageous properties. It is cheap to produce, adaptable, durable, and versatile - all reasons for plastic's popularity.

And plastic has had a dramatic impact on our lives. For decades it was a material we took for granted. We threw it away, we produced more, and we used more. From its ubiquity and many valued uses through to the resulting mass of the stuff now floating in the world's Oceans, we have lived through many years full of plastic.

It is also impossible to avoid it as it is almost everywhere. From smartphones to cars and food packaging, our reliance on this durable and functional material has led to 348 million tonnes of the stuff being produced every year.

Yet, each year, 8 million metric tons of the plastic we produce plastic finds their way into the Ocean. And masses of plastic waste are washing up on beaches, with 60-80% of marine waste consisting of plastic9. Once in our landfills or Oceans plastic can take thousands of years to decompose4.

This effectively damages the natural food chain1. As a result, almost 700 species in the ocean are affected by plastic5. Marine life is suffering from our lack of care and ignorance7.

As a result, we are now looking for alternatives to plastic. People are switching to reusable containers and even supermarkets are actively moving to reduce plastic packaging waste.

Thus, for a cleaner planet, we simply cannot keep adding to the plastic waste that travels the world via our oceans. So, in our search for sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives, natural materials such as bamboo may well be part of the answer.

Bamboo - Can it be an alternative?

Can bamboo really compete with and replace some of our plastic consumption3?

What is Bamboo?

Bamboo is actually a type of grass with a hollow stem. It grows prolifically in its natural home in more tropical and humid climates.

Bamboo is widely available. Large quantities can be found in many countries across Asia, Africa, South America, and the USA.

It's also very strong. Many examples throughout history demonstrate Bamboo's versatility and various benefits. Its hollow nature, strength, lightweight, and fast growth have traditionally made it perfect for the construction of everything from Bamboo homes to bridges.

Bamboo on the rise?

However, in more recent times, the mass production of plastic has somewhat sidelined Bamboo's potential role in our modern lives.

All the same, we can now witness Bamboo becoming a more accessible option as companies search for opportunities to provide more eco-friendly alternatives a growing number of consumers now demand. As such, in our fight against plastic waste, we should consider the qualities of natural bamboo fibers and check how well those eco-friendly claims stack up.

The Qualities of Bamboo

Some now consider bamboo to be the green gold that we have been looking for. If the bamboo versus plastic argument is going to carry some serious weight in favor of bamboo, then we should look at the reasons why we can use it as a replacement

Bamboo has been used for centuries and for good reason. It's fast-growing, cheap to produce, ubiquitous, and versatile. It is easily and readily available. And so it's already well-positioned to keep up with any growth in consumer and production demands.

Further, it is also an eco-friendly renewable material. Therefore, it can be replanted and grown as it is harvested. Many species of Bamboo grown in the right conditions can reach maturity in a couple of months. Far faster than most trees which can take years or even decades.

There is also little need to use pesticides or fertilizers because Bamboo has natural antifungal and antibacterial properties.

Additionally, growing the bamboo plant typically uses less water than trees. Researchers suggest this is a result of better storage of water in the growing Bamboo shoots and less leaf foliage per plant. And whereas sometimes the production process uses chemicals, their use is less intensive than many other crops.

What's more, we can use it, plant more and help to reduce carbon emissions at the same time as bamboo releases 35% more oxygen than the equivalent volume of trees.

Further, unlike plastic, Bamboo is also fully biodegradable and compostable. As a result, as any natural Bamboo products do get to the end of their useful lives; once discarded, they will not take thousands of years to decompose.

Read more: All about Bamboo And Is It Sustainable?

Choosing Bamboo Over Plastic

We use over one million plastic bags each minute, and studies suggest as little as 9 percent of the plastic we use is recycled or reused.

We have taken our planet for granted, dumping waste carelessly, and now we are waking up to the impacts. Our behaviors have to change if we are to make a serious impact on our plastic waste.

We also have to take into consideration the manufacturing process involved in making plastic and the impact it has on the environment. We use our finite oil reserves to make new plastic. Of course, this oil comes from drilling and refining, both of which inevitably cause more harm to the environment than growing a field of Bamboo.

And once we have oil, we then use more energy and chemicals to manufacture it into the many types and variants of plastic that we have become used to having in our daily lives.

So, is bamboo a viable alternative? Absolutely. When we look around our homes, there is plastic everywhere. However, quite a lot of our household items can be replaced with bamboo, a more sustainable alternative to plastic.

Bamboo toothbrushes can replace plastic toothbrushes. Chopping boards made from Bamboo can replace plastic chopping boards. Bamboo makes for an excellent alternative to disposable plastic plates and cutlery. We can even use Bamboo straws instead of plastic straws, clean up with bamboo toilet paper after brushing with bamboo toothbrushes, and choose eco-friendly bamboo packaging.

Further, we're also starting to see increasing amounts of textiles used for clothes being sourced from Bamboo fibers to make more sustainable bamboo fabric. Reducing our reliance on petroleum-based synthetics often blended with cotton, which typically requires more water and energy than Bamboo to provide the end fibers used in our clothes.

Our Favourite Bamboo Swaps for Plastic:

All on Amazon:

Bamboo Cutlery and Reusable Utensils with Case:

Bamboo Cutting Board:

Bamboo Toothbrushes:

Check out our larger selection of the best bamboo toothbrushes over here

Bamboo - The Good and the Bad

Bamboo the good and the bad
Photo by Mai Rodriguez on Unsplash

Bamboo grows in natural environments and is not susceptible to lengthy and polluting production processes like plastic8. Unlike other products, it does not have to go through significant changes in order to become usable. Especially in its natural form for everything from bowls through to cutlery.

It is also a material that can offer many of the same properties as plastic. It is durable, versatile, and strong.

What also makes bamboo a feasible alternative is its production costs. Tapping into a natural material that is already widely grown can present cost advantages when at scale. Of course, this also means that it does not use oil reserves to produce raw materials.

While this sounds promising, a chemical process is required to extract fibers from Bamboo for use in items such as clothing and textiles. Various chemicals including sulfur and sodium hydroxide are used in order to obtain the cellulose fibers that are then used in textile production.

As per many manufacturing processes, the resulting by-products can cause harm to our soils as well as impacting nearby biodiversity. Of course, we also need to create chemicals in the first place. Unfortunately, processing bamboo in this way is not an exception.

Bamboo Versus Plastic - Does Bamboo Have Longevity?

In a similar way as several types of renewable energy such as solar power and wind power will be required to meet our clean energy needs, the same will be required in order to significantly reduce our use of plastic. Biodegradable and compostable alternatives will inevitably come from several sources6.

Whether it is a biodegradable toothbrush or clothing, bamboo is one of the alternatives that we can now choose.

Meanwhile, scientists and researchers continually look for improvements in the production and manufacture of our day-to-day goods. And today the search for more environmentally friendly products continues at a pace.

It's certainly possible more viable alternatives may come to the fore. Be that more cost-effective or with less harmful manufacturing. Similarly, we can expect environmental improvements to many of the manufacturing processes we see today, including those of Bamboo. As such, quite how significant Bamboo will become as a long-term replacement still remains to be seen.

The future will almost certainly present a wider range of plastic alternatives than we see today. Will Bamboo continue to grow in popularity and deliver its green gold promises? We'll have to wait and see.

What we do know is that we must balance the damage we are causing to our planet, our natural habitat, and our health. Especially when considering what happens to those microplastics when they enter the food chain2.

Is Bamboo an Eco-Friendly Alternative?

On the upside, it is sustainable, does not take an age to decompose, and can be grown on a large scale. It can also help to offset CO2 emissions, which is another key benefit.

Meanwhile, plastic is killing wildlife and marine life whilst also causing changes to our natural ecosystems. It is also littering our beaches. Plastic is a problem.

Thus, there's little argument that we must make changes to help mitigate the pollution of our planet and Oceans with disposable single-use plastic. Therefore, we must increase our use of sustainable natural alternatives which biodegrade naturally.

Bamboo does require a potentially harmful manufacturing process to arrive at some of the goods it might replace. However, are the problems less significant than the problems caused by Plastic? It certainly doesn't look that way.

Bamboo provides a natural and organic raw material we can use here and now in place of many of our day-to-day plastic items. And that has to be good news.

Of course, a big part of the answer is reducing our need to consume as many single-use items in the first place. Swaps are part of the solution. Reducing and reusing is also key.

Thus, we have the choice to replace plastic with bamboo where possible and practical. If we can make scale up the environmentally friendly manufacture and subsequent use of bamboo, we can help to make a dent in the damage caused by plastic.

And then we can then work to clean up our beaches and oceans without adding to the plastic pollution we've already caused.

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1Are We "Digging Our Own Grave" Under the Oceans? Biosphere-Level Effects and Global Policy Challenge from Plastic(s) in Oceans. Raveender Vannela. ASU Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, United States
2Brain damage and behavioural disorders in fish induced by plastic nanoparticles delivered through the food chain. Karin Mattsson, Elyse V. Johnson, Anders Malmendal, Sara Linse, Lars-Anders Hansson & Tommy Cedervall. Scientific Reports, volume 7, Article number: 11452 (2017)
3Pozo Morales A, Güemes A, Fernandez-Lopez A, Carcelen Valero V, De La Rosa Llano S. Bamboo-Polylactic Acid (PLA) Composite Material for Structural Applications. Materials (Basel). 2017 Nov 9;10(11). pii: E1286. doi: 10.3390/ma10111286. PubMed PMID: 29120398; ubMed Central PMCID: PMC5706233.
4Comparison of Environmental Impact of Plastic, Paper and Cloth Bags. Kirsty Bell and Suzie Cave. Northern Ireland Assembly.
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6Song J. H., Murphy R. J., Narayan R. and Davies G. B. H. Biodegradable and compostable alternatives to conventional plastics. 364. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0289
7Plastic Waste Inputs from Land into the Ocean. Jenna R. Jambeck, Roland Geyer, Chris Wilcox, Theodore R. Siegler, Miriam Perryman, Anthony Andrady, Ramani Narayan, Kara Lavender Law. Science, vol. 347, no. 6223, 13 Feb. 2015, pp. 768–771, doi:10.1126/science.1260352
8Imadi S.R., Mahmood I., Kazi A.G. (2014) Bamboo Fiber Processing, Properties, and Applications. In: Hakeem K., Jawaid M., Rashid U. (eds) Biomass and Bioenergy. Springer, Cham
9Plastic debris in the ocean. Carroll, Chris, Sousa, João, Thevenon, F. IUCNIUCN, Global Marine and Polar Programme. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.CH.2014.03.en
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