Last week I ended my article on bamboo as a means to sustain life with a description of the way my friend Kay Jimenez had grown bamboo and built a house. Would you believe another use - a bamboo bike?
At the seminar at Kay’s Bamboo Garden on Oct. 17, 2009, I mentioned that a series of lectures under the title "Learn and Earn from Bamboo Experts" was held. The first discussion was on the bahay kubo designed by Architect Lazaro for Kay. The next topic, given by Hector Villanueva of Kawayan Tech, Philippines, a group formed by the UP Mountaineers, was about the production of bamboo bikes as taught by Craig Calfee of Columbia University, who developed a bamboo bike program in Ghana. A model bike was actually brought there for participants to try out. Calfee, who designed and tested a bamboo bike, showed that it is just as good if not better than those utilizing the usual high-tech materials (it even rides better as it is less jarring).
In these days of permanent sky-high prices, bikes are a viable means of transportation (and in UP, the Padyak Project has been successfully tried - much cheaper than "Ikot" jeepneys cost today). Indeed, bamboo is a viable material for transportation, and Cambodia was cited as having built its own bamboo train that reaches speeds of 40 km/hour. Similarly, in Bangued, Abra, government worker Chris Adriatico built an attention-getting bamboo jeep in 1992. Other products for development by Kawayan Tech are bamboo skateboards, bamboo surfboards, and bamboo bike racks.
The Philippine Department of Science and Technology notes that Thomas Edison supposedly used a carbonized bamboo filament in his experiments in developing the light bulb. Alexander Graham Bell also used bamboo for his first phonograph needle. And let’s not forget our famous Bamboo Organ in Las Piñas!
Of course, there are so many other uses of bamboo which, as I mentioned last week, could be harnessed for economic development and poverty alleviation. Bamboo products enjoy an increasing demand in both the local and export markets - from food to furniture, handicraft, and construction. According to the speaker, bamboo has been recorded to have more than 1500 uses, of which was mentioned only a few. All parts of the bamboo plant can be used for rural livelihood: the shoots, for food; the leaves, for fodder, medicine, beer, and wine; branches for items such as furniture decor, brooms, and textile (yes, Mr. Romualdo Sta Ana of the Philippine Bamboo Foundation showed us clothes made from bamboo fiber!); the culm for flooring, construction materials, furniture and furnishings and handicraft; roots and sheaths for handicraft; leaves, branches, roots, and even all the wastes produced in processing bamboo for charcoal/fuel. If ever you thought bamboo was the poor man’s housing material, we were informed that bamboo flooring tiles cost $80/sq.m in the US and $100/sq.m in Europe!
It was also mentioned that bamboo is now used as a component material in car parts, computer equipment (Dell recently came out with an eco-computer in bamboo casing which is 81% smaller than current desktops and will use 70% less power), musical instruments, as building and bridge construction materials, pulp and paper production, etc. Architects, engineers, furniture designers, and social entrepreneurs, both domestic and local, are looking for new materials that are relatively light but sturdy, durable, biodegradable and renewable, and has the look and workability of wood with a higher level of creativity in products designed and developed. The possibilities for the use of bamboo are endless!
According to R.A. Natividad, another lecturer at Kay’s seminar, the Philippines has 68 bamboo species composed of 52 erect-type and 16 climbing. Bamboo stands throughout the country cover around 39,000 to 53,000 ha. With a potential average production of 36 million culm worth about P3 billion a year.
And so, isn’t it reasonable to encourage the establishment of nurseries and plantations such as what Kay Jimenez has embarked on? Some of the development strategies suggested were: (1) awareness raising and capacity building, by which all stakeholders (LGUs, NGOs, farmers, cooperatives, potential investors, and organizations in the academe and science community) meet and present and provide training on bamboo development and potential, on bamboo stand rehabilitation, and bamboo nursery establishment; (2) natural resource rehabilitation, nursery establishment, protection, and management (most of the existing bamboo resources in the Philippines are neglected, and should be rehabilitated to make them more productive); (3) bamboo resource inventory and resource mapping; (4) developing plantations for industrial uses; (5) strategies such as identification of main bamboo products base on existing resources, local traditional culture and domestic and international market demand, optimization of product structures and increasing their utilization rate; and gradual development of mechanization; (6) establishment of demonstration and training sites as well as "bagsakan" centers where farmers and craftsmen can market their products; (7) establish the value chain to enhance competitiveness (partnerships among bamboo farmers, primary processing factories, and finished products); and finally (8) develop, amend, and strengthen policies on land use, on rules on transport of bamboo poles and products, as well as provide subsidies for a limited time at both the national and local government levels.
The new Climate Change Act having been approved recently, perhaps as a corollary, a stronger advocacy for bamboo as an answer to our environmental woes and poverty alleviation strategies, should be pushed especially at the national policy level. At the policy level, it might be suggested that allowing carbon credits to propagators of bamboo use be studied. As demonstrated in the foregoing paragraphs, bamboo is one of the most economically important non-timber forest resources that the Philippines is blessed with. Isn’t this reason enough to promote the use and propagation of bamboo?
