Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This page may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that I have recommended. There is no additional cost to you whatsoever.
Image credit score: Ettitude‘s bamboo sheets are literally lyocell comprised of bamboo, and are OEKO-TEX-certified.
The manner moral vogue manufacturers promote bamboo material, you’d assume that it’s a sustainable surprise materials that’s revolutionizing the trade. Since turning into commercially widespread within the early 2000s, there have been numerous claims about the advantages of bamboo material — from its purported antibacterial and temperature-controlling properties to its environmental credentials.
The fact is, bamboo has been so wildly misrepresented that a couple of years in the past, the Federal Trade Commission cracked down on the greenwashing and fined manufacturers like Amazon, Sears, Macy’s, Leon Max, JCPenney, and Bed, Bath & Beyond for misleading customers with their “bamboo” merchandise.
Because of its supposed advantages, bamboo material is usually utilized in sportswear, socks, underwear and fundamentals, in addition to towels and sheets. It has an excellent popularity as an eco-friendly fiber, however is it a sustainable silver bullet? Short reply, no. But, as with most issues on this planet of textiles, it’s sophisticated. Before we are able to dive into the advanced reply to this query, let’s begin with the fundamentals.
Is bamboo an eco-friendly crop?
The overwhelming majority of the bamboo available on the market (70% according to this 2017 report) comes from China, the place it’s been grown for hundreds of years. However, nations like Indonesia and Vietnam are additionally main exporters too. It’s distinctive in that it doesn’t require pesticides or chemical substances, and it’s the quickest rising plant on the planet — bamboo can develop as much as three-feet in a day and might even be used to take away pollution from soil, air and water via a course of referred to as phytoremediation.
However, the ever-growing demand for bamboo, which has more than doubled since the year 2000, has led to the destruction of pure forests for bamboo crops. From a biodiversity standpoint that’s extremely worrying.
Bamboo is a giant enterprise in China. It was predicted in 2018 that the trade was value $60 billion. Because it’s primarily grown in a rustic the place provide chains are tough to hint and human rights abuse within the textile sector has been a major issue in the last few years, it’s unimaginable to definitively say that this bamboo is grown and harvested ethically or sustainably.
“If we have a look at the chance concerned [with bamboo], it’s not solely from a social and human rights perspective, but additionally from an environmental perspective,” says Megan Stoneburner, Director of Materials at Textile Exchange. “We don’t have visibility and transparency all the way down to the farmer degree. That’s an enormous concern… We don’t have actual information, nor do we’ve the certifications to steer finest practices of rising bamboo.”
So whereas bamboo can be grown with out pesticides and is usually a rain-fed crop, a lot of the safeguards or audits in place to ensure this aren’t straight linked to bamboo for textiles — the FSC has a certification for bamboo, but it surely’s largely involved with flooring. There can be no method to show that its harvest isn’t accomplished utilizing exploited or pressured labor.
How do you flip bamboo into material?
There are two methods of turning bamboo from a plant to a textile. The first is mechanical, the place bamboo is crushed into fibers, that are then spun into yarn. The consequence is called bamboo linen, and it’s the far much less widespread number of bamboo material available on the market, as the method is time-consuming and costly (like linen or hemp). This is taken into account the one real bamboo material you may get.
“Most of what you’d run into in business functions just isn’t actually a bamboo fiber,” explains Ben Mead, Managing Director of the Hohenstein Institute America, which gives testing and, via OEKO-TEX, certifications for the textile trade. “It’s been processed as a man-made cellulosic fiber. It’s primarily rayon.”
Rayon is a household of materials which are derived from vegetation, with essentially the most common types on the market being viscose and modal. Most rayon or viscose is comprised of timber. And how do you flip a tough, fibrous plant or tree into material? Chemicals, and plenty of them. Caustic soda (also known as sodium hydroxide) and carbon disulfide are added to bamboo chips, making a pulp resolution that’s pushed via a spinneret and spun into yarn.
Despite not making it to the tip garment wearer, each caustic soda and carbon disulfide are extremely dangerous to the atmosphere and employees uncovered to those chemical substances. Carbon disulfide is a chemical that’s been linked to kidney illness, signs just like Parkinson’s, coronary heart assaults and strokes, in keeping with the World Health Organisation. This Atlantic story from 2016 particulars the chemical’s early noticed hyperlink to inflicting “acute madness” within the late 1800s in addition to inflicting beginning defects and “menstrual disturbances.” Likewise, if inhaled or ingested, caustic soda may cause burns, corrosion and eye damage. If they’re not correctly disposed of, these chemical substances are dumped into riverways and might have disastrous effects on surrounding communities and wildlife. “This severely impacts wildlife in addition to native communities’ capability to entry clear ingesting water and earn a residing from actions corresponding to fishing or aquaculture,” explains the Dirty Fashion report.
“It’s about chemical substances administration, and that’s key to all of this,” says Stoneburner. “How can we begin to rework the fiber provide chain in order that it’s closed-loop and also you’re managing the chemical substances in a accountable manner? We have to make sure that we’re not emitting these chemical substances into the air, which impacts employees, in addition to ensuring that water is being correctly handled earlier than it’s discarded.”
There is a much less environmentally dangerous manner of creating rayon – the lyocell methodology. Made in the identical manner that Lenzing’s Tencel material is made — with out the extremely poisonous carbon disulfide — in a closed-loop production method. This means the chemical substances wanted to create the yarn are reused many times, and water waste is saved to a minimal. Lyocell bamboo is taken into account a safer different to viscose bamboo rayon.
Currently, lyocell solely makes up 4.3% of worldwide cellulosic fibers (compared, viscose has a 79% market share), however according to Fashion For Good, it’s set to develop by 15% within the coming years.
What in regards to the supposed technical advantages of bamboo material?
Super-soft, absorbent, antimicrobial, hypoallergenic, temperature-controlling, UV blocking — is there something bamboo material can’t do? As a cellulosic fiber, we are able to’t deny that bamboo material does have some temperature regulating properties. And any tightly woven fabric will present some degree of UV blocking. But bamboo’s efficiency qualities above and past, say, cotton, aren’t backed up by science. “To be frank, a number of that’s deceptive,” says Stoneburner. “Because finishes are sometimes utilized that make these issues, they’ve added in efficiency advantages.”
While it’s true that bamboo vegetation themselves have antimicrobial results, that is stripped away when it’s become a cloth. “It’s usually related to the oils inside the plant,” says Mead. “So the extra processing and the extra you take away these oils, you find yourself with primarily cellulose, and cellulose doesn’t have that antimicrobial exercise.”
Should you spend your cash on bamboo clothes?
While bamboo appears to be a darling of small manufacturers, the big ones aren’t very concerned about it. “Based on my model connections and insights, people who have a sustainability technique in place, they’re not figuring out bamboo as an answer,” says Stoneburner.
So what ought to we be utilizing to make rayon if bamboo (or timber) isn’t the reply? Waste, Stoneburner says, like used cotton merchandise, or agricultural byproducts. “You can chemically recycle waste streams right into a man-made cellulosic fiber,” she says. “There are a number of fascinating ideas on the market.”
Like with all supplies, there are sustainable and unsustainable choices available on the market, so it pays to dig deeper and discover out precisely what kind of bamboo material a model is utilizing, from the place it sources the fabric, and what certifications it has. Look for lyocell bamboo or bamboo linen over bamboo rayon, and when doubtful you possibly can at all times ask the model which one it makes use of. You can usually discover bamboo-specific manufacturers (like BAM, based in the UK) breaking down the manufacturing and sourcing of their materials to assist information your decision-making.
Bamboo clothes isn’t going wherever, so it’s vital to push for transparency from all events — from manufacturers to the farms — to make sure bamboo is held to the identical requirements as different materials. “The trade seems to be at bamboo as a method to diversify away from wooden, but when that’s the case we have to have certifications and requirements, traceability and visibility,” says Stoneburner. “It’s about constructing the identical rigor and excited about progressive, renewable, regenerative options.”
No matter what attracts you to purchasing “bamboo” clothes — whether or not it’s the technical or environmental credentials — it pays to look past the advertising and imprecise claims to grasp precisely what you’re getting.
We can say for positive, although, that it’s in all probability not all you had been hoping for.
