Hardly!
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
We are being told again and again how green bamboo flooring is and bamboo clothes but nothing could be further from the truth.
Bamboo is being touted all the time as such a green plant because it regrows ever so quickly not being a tree but a very tall grass in fact. While bamboo utensils and such, produced directly from the stem of the plant are fine and there is no problem with them as long as they are produced in the manner the natives of South East Asia use bamboo but flooring and clothes are not green and environmentally friendly at all.
Flooring is a laminate and the production of bamboo flooring requires a great deal of energy and glues. The fabric is nothing but a viscose and produced in the same environmentally dangerous way as normal viscose.
So, the entire story about green and environmentally friendly bamboo is nothing but what? Yes, greenwash of the highest order.
Those of us that wish to really live a greener lifestyle must beware of the pitfalls because of all the unscrupulous businesses and people that jump onto the green bandwagon at every opportunity.
They do say that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it may, just possibly, be a duck and while that is easy to discern in that department with supposedly green products it often is an entirely different story.
Traditional products that are made of bamboo in the traditional way of the peoples of South East Asia and China where bamboo is commonly used are one thing and they are fine and even green but those that are produced by using lots of energy, and worse still, those that also use lots of chemicals in the form of glues and others are not green at all and any attempt to paint them as such does not make them green either.
So, as they always say, let the buyer beware.
Bamboo fiber and bamboo flooring is not green and environmentally friendly in any way, shape or form and that's the short and long of it.
© 2009
<>
