Man has found myriad of uses for bamboo plant
Man has found myriad of uses for bamboo plant
By Amir Sidharta
Man can survive without meat, but will die without bamboo.
-- Confucius
JAKARTA (JP): Enter bamboo, a slender, fast-growing plant that
is said to have miraculous potential in replenishing the earth.
Uniquely, while it offers a myriad of environmental uses, it also
has tremendous potential for industry. Its diversity should make
bamboo attractive to environmentalists and industrialists alike.
Bamboo is considered as a miracle plant partly because of its
capability to withstand immense pressure and stress. Bamboo is
known to be one of the few things to survive the atomic bomb
explosion in Hiroshima.
Primarily due to its property as the fastest growing plant in
the world, bamboo has tremendous potential to provide
environmental repair. Each year, millions of hectares of tropical
rain forests are used primarily to provide the world with wood.
If this continues, the world's rain forests will soon disappear.
Wood has a limited regenerative potential. It has a two to
five percent annual increase in biomass and takes years to grow.
Furthermore, if it is felled, it has to be replanted.
By contrast, bamboo has a much greater regenerative capacity.
Each plant grows an average of two inches an hour, or over one
meter a day. Bamboo shows a 10 to 30 percent annual increase in
terms of biomass, much higher than wood. Bamboo can be harvested
in four years, compared to seven to 20 years for trees. Once
harvested, the mother plant continues to reproduce itself. One
culm of bamboo produces more than one bamboo plant so it can be
selectively harvested. Bamboo lives between 50 to 60 years.
Like wood, bamboo is hard and durable, has good tension and is
therefore an appropriate substitute or alternative to wood.
Bamboo is known to be able to withstand 52,000 pounds of
pressure. Its tensile strength is 28,000 pounds per square inch,
greater than steel at 23,000 psi. Bamboo reinforcement bars take
up 170 times less energy to produce than the equivalent steel
bars.
Highly durable bamboo can be used to make construction
materials such as ply bamboo and bamboo flooring material.
Finished properly, bamboo flooring has an appeal similar to teak
parquet. China, the leading producer of bamboo products, boasts
over 200 ply-bamboo factories.
Bamboo's long fibers makes it an excellent ingredient for
paper pulp. Bamboo paper is made using a combination of wood and
bamboo pulp. Although wood is a better material for paper pulp,
the fact that the regeneration time for bamboo is far less gives
it the potential to limit deforestation.
Two paper companies in Indonesia, one in Banyuwangi and the
other in Goa, have used bamboo for pulp. However, the bamboo they
used was not harvested properly, and therefore the supply of
bamboo dropped significantly. This caused the companies to be
unable to operate efficiently. The lack of a consistent and
adequate supply has caused bamboo pulp paper and bamboo chopstick
factories to close down in Indonesia.
Knowledge about bamboo agriculture has advanced remarkably.
With proper harvesting, utilizing the techniques that are
currently available, employing bamboo for pulp will not only
reduce deforestation but also become profitable. Environmental potential
Apart from the variety of products into which bamboo can be
developed, its significance for environmental repair goes beyond
its use as an alternative to wood. The plant also has potential
to provide erosion control. Bamboo's dense foliage limits rain
fall. The sum stem flow rate and canopy interval intercept of
bamboo is 25 percent, greatly reducing rain runoff. Its root
system anchors topsoil to the earth, reducing earthquake and
flood damage. The silica content emitted by the plant provides
soil with a hardening agent. Bamboo is often seen lining edges of
terraced landscapes of many Indonesian villages with semi-arid or
degraded acid soils.
Due to its capacity to retain water, bamboo can be an
excellent tool in watershed management. On average, one culm of
bamboo can fix 5.8 cubic meters of soil. With its high biomass
production, bamboo also has a great potential for carbon
sequestration. It is also a good microclimate regulator, as it
stabilizes temperature and lowers light intensity. Types of
bamboo can grow on arid land to tidal flats.
As if its value to the environment were not enough, bamboo has
numerous other specific functions, more than 5,000 according to
one source book, Bamboo of Indonesia by Dr. Elizabeth Widjaya.
One type of bamboo, the Thyrostachys Siamensis, provides
excellent sound proofing. Planted along fences in a city, this
plant will buffer not only pollution but noise as well.
Bamboo shoots are a well-known and increasingly popular
foodstuff and are being developed for medicines. The shoots of
yellow bamboo are believed to cure liver problems. Tabashir, the
sap that hardens between the nodes of certain bamboo varieties,
is known as a medicine for asthma. Research has indicated that
bamboo has the potential to cure cancer.
The plant also sustains the production of diesel fuel and
rayon fabrics. It should also be noted that Thomas Edison
developed the light bulb using a filament made of carbonized
bamboo.
Economic potential
According to the latest data, 70 million tons of bamboo is
harvested annually around the world. In 1988 bamboo harvest
totaled 20 million tons worldwide, providing a revenue of US$4.5
billion. New bamboo plantations earn a three to five-year return
on investment, compared to eight to 10 years for rattan.
Many people in Asia have invested in the lucrative bamboo
industry. In China, 6.8 million hectares of land is planted with
bamboo, almost half of which is intensively managed for bamboo
production.
At the forefront of the bamboo paper industry, China produced
152,500 tons in 1988. This marked an increase of 32 percent
compared to the previous year. In India, 80 paper mills are
partially or wholly dependent on paper making, consuming 62
percent of India's entire bamboo production.
In the food industry, the consumption of bamboo shoots is
tremendous. The annual demand in Taiwan averages 80,000 tons,
while Japan consumes almost twice as much. Every year Thailand
exports 350 to 400 tons of canned shoots to Japan. Bamboo shoots
are reported to earn $350 million annually.
Future business
With both environmental and industrial potential, bamboo
should be an attractive investment commodity. Some 60,000 people
in Indonesia depend on bamboo for their livelihood. lndonesia
enjoys a yearly income of $150 million in foreign exchange
earnings from bamboo products, and the number is increasing
rapidly.
However, only a small number of investors have realized the
plant's potential. Five years ago, Gunung Sewu Group's Great
Giant Pineapple factory in Lampung, initially only produced
bamboo shoots. Now it has allocated 1,250 hectares of land to be
planted with 500,000 bamboo clusters of various kinds and ages.
A paper factory is being constructed nearby which will use
bamboo as a raw material. It plans to start production by mid-
year. Other large companies in Central Lampung, such as Salim
Group's PT Sweet Indo Lampung, as well as Indra Rukmana's PT
Gunung Madu Plantation and PT Gula Putih Mataram has started to
plant bamboo for the reforestation of sites no longer adequate
for the cultivation of sugar cane. The cuttings of old bamboo
trees from the Great Giant Pineapple farm, are being used by the
Gunung Sewu Group's PT Nusantara Tropical Fruits as supports for
its banana trees. There is also a coal mine at Tanjung Enim in
South Sumatra that uses bamboo to green their sites.
According to Agus Mashudi, a bamboo expert at their pineapple
company's plantation in Terbanggi Besar, a national bamboo
campaign is needed. Forestry Concession Right holders should be
introduced to bamboos' reforestation properties. Perhaps they
should even be required to reforest using bamboo, he added.
Mashudi also suggested that bamboo be introduced to the general
public, through Industrial Plant Forests or People's Industrial
Plantations programs, especially outside Java, where land is
still available. Bamboo would be ideal for critical areas in
Indonesia, such as Eastern Nusa Tenggara, where the plant will
also be able to improve the standard of living of the local
population. He says that these programs need a foster parent to
ensure that the bamboo from the programs will be further utilized
for other industries. This can develop into an interdependent and
mutually beneficial industry for both the farmers and their
foster parents.
Mashudi's idea echoes former State Minister for the
Environment Emil Salim's remarks at a seminar on the future of
bamboo last year. Emil said experts should draw up a program for
an integrated bamboo industry. "We can draw up a strategy of how
to hike income through an integrated program linking cultivation
with industry."
Foreseeing an increase in demand for bamboo products, due to
its environmental and technological characteristics as well as
its nutritional and medicinal properties, the time seems right to
invest in bamboo. Bamboo will heal our wounded planet faster if
major businesses support exploration and utilization.
At last year seminar on bamboo's future, chairman of the
Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Aburizal Bakrie saw
the bright prospects of bamboo as one of the major international
commodities. State Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja
said the protection of the environment will improve if Indonesia
can encourage the use of natural resources for business purposes
because businesses will have a vested interest in maintaining
their operations.
Linda Garland of the Bali-based Environmental Bamboo
Foundation reminds that "for thousands of years there has been a
deep knowledge and respect for the importance of bamboo in the
everyday life of the Asian people." Further, she claims, "now is
the time for the full understanding of this miracle plant to be
adopted and adapted by the world."
Sarwono Kusumaatmadja added that Indonesia has a large number
of bamboo species but it has not diversified the use of bamboo.
At one time bamboo was quite widely used, however its popularity
has declined with the availability of new materials, such as
plastic.
One problem in reestablishing bamboo as a sound material in
daily life is the stigma attached to it. Bamboo is often
considered a poor man's timber and an inferior substitute to wood
and rattan. Former environmental minister Emil Salim says
Indonesia should change this image of bamboo. Furthermore, bamboo
is the most appropriate crop for remote, underdeveloped and
earthquake prone areas such as Flores. Using bamboo, architects
can build earthquake resistant houses. In addition, bamboo can
also offer a sustainable resource for industry, thus increasing
the standard of living of villagers.
Remember every time a light bulb burns out, that the
carbonized-bamboo filament that Thomas Edison used to develop the
first bulb, kept at the Smithsonian, still lights up during its
rare test. Although he eventually concluded that bamboo was not
the best choice for the filament, Edison couldn't have succeeded
without bamboo. Without bamboo man will die, said Confucius. With
bamboo man will not only survive, but may also reap considerable
benefits.