Is Bamboo Clothing Truly Sustainable? Yes and No
Bamboo activewear is a popular choice for consumers, with most touting that it's a better textile for the planet, but few could tell you why. But is a fabric made from bamboo truly sustainable or are there hidden problems consumers need to watch out for?
While bamboo itself is a highly sustainable resource, bamboo garments may not be manufactured through sustainable methods. The process of making bamboo fabric usually requires using harmful chemicals that have a detrimental impact on the planet and its water sources.
So is bamboo activewear truly sustainable? Yes and no - it's not a straightforward answer. There are ways to harness the power of this plant without destroying the environment but they aren't used as often as you'd hope. Let's look closer at the good side and the bad side of bamboo activewear so you can form your own opinion.
Is Bamboo Fabric Eco-Friendly?
Though bamboo fabric is biodegradable, the process of making it often releases hazardous chemicals. In other words, its sustainability rests on a sliding scale--but more often than not, bamboo falls on the side of being eco-friendly.
You can picture it clearly - serene, lushly dense, and perfectly green - a bamboo forest creates the image of eco-friendly material. But converting this grass into fabric isn't a simple and natural solution.
This means we'll have to separate bamboo as a resource from the processes used to make clothing out of the raw material. Let's look at both in more detail, starting with the raw eco-material of bamboo.
Bamboo: The Ultimate Renewable Eco-Material
The bamboo plant is a very sustainable resource for a variety of important reasons, here are seven noteworthy benefits:
1. Bamboo Grows Quickly
First, bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on the planet. It reaches its full height in just 3-5 years and some varieties can grow up to three feet per day!
That's around 1.5" per hour, which is mind-boggling.
2. Bamboo Doesn’t Require Much Water
Most types of bamboo only need around 50mm - 100mm (2"-4") of water per week once they're established. This is tiny in comparison to other thirsty plants and trees that we use for fabrics, such as cotton.
3. Bamboo Doesn't Require Fertilizer or Pesticide
While bamboo does require some form of nutrient to grow, it's a very efficient absorber.
This means that it doesn't need as much fertilizer as other plants to stay healthy. Pesticides are also hardly ever used on bamboo crops because the plant itself has very few natural predators.
The culms (the main stem) are too hard for animals to chew and the plant contains a chemical that wards off most insects.
4. Bamboo Loves to Absorb Carbon Dioxide
Bamboo is a carbon-negative material, meaning that it absorbs more carbon dioxide than it emits during its growth.
This makes it a very eco-friendly plant as it helps to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
5. Bamboo is Naturally Regenerative
Once bamboo is harvested, the root system remains intact and continues to grow.
This means that it's a self-regenerating resource that doesn't need to be replanted after each harvest like other crops.
The same can't be said of most fast-growing trees, such as pine, which are typically cut down at the root, preventing them from growing back. To boot, bamboo isn't picky about where it grows and can be found in tropical, subtropical, and temperate climates all around the world.
It's even one of the few plants that can thrive in extremely cold environments.
6. Bamboo Restores Soil Quality
As the grass grows, it breaks down nutrients in the soil and enriches it with nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus.
This makes it ideal for growing other crops after bamboo has been harvested as the quality of the soil has been greatly improved.
7. Bamboo Charcoal Has Numerous Benefits
Bamboo charcoal, a byproduct of heating bamboo to a high temperature, can be used for filtration, air purification, and even as an additive to clothing.
Bamboo charcoal activewear helps capture odor, toxins, and moisture at an incredible rate.
All of these reasons make bamboo a very eco-friendly plant to grow as long as its cultivation of it doesn’t threaten natural habitats.
So what truly makes bamboo eco-friendly or not comes down to how bamboo fabrics are created.
Bamboo Textile Production: Green or Worse?
Whether bamboo clothing ends up being eco-friendly ultimately comes down to the manufacturing process used to create the fabric.
There are three primary ways to produce textiles from bamboo as a raw material. For your benefit these are arranged in order of least to most environmentally friendly:
1. Bamboo Viscose (Bamboo Rayon) and Bamboo Modal
Unfortunately, the majority of bamboo clothing in production uses a conventional viscose manufacturing process, where the fibrous bamboo material is treated with chemicals to create a pulp that can be further processed into fabric.
The viscose process of manufacturing bamboo clothing requires the use of harsh chemicals to dissolve the plant fibers. Bamboo modal is far more environmentally sound than bamboo viscose, but it is also a chemical process that relies on a water-based solution, with high potential to pollute water systems.
Often toxic ingredients such as carbon disulfide, sodium hydroxide, and sulfuric acid are required to break the bamboo down for further production.
What’s worse is that the process is not a closed-loop system - meaning the water and chemicals used are not recycled and instead make their way into the surrounding environment.
In actuality, the resulting fabric created through this process no longer resembles the original bamboo plant.
In fact, the FTC issued an official warning that bamboo rayon should not be advertised as containing natural bamboo!
2. Bamboo Lyocell
Lyocell is a process used to create fabric from cellulose in wood and can be similarly used on bamboo.
What’s important to know is that the process to create bamboo lyocell activewear is a big step in the right direction for the environment, compared to chemical processes for bamboo viscose or bamboo modal.
Unlike those other chemical manufacturing processes, which require large quantities of toxic additives and water to break down bamboo, lyocell uses a non-toxic solvent, amine-oxide.
Another defining feature of lyocell is that it utilizes a closed-loop process, meaning the manufacturing doesn't create harmful by-products.
The solvents and water used to manufacture bamboo activewear in the lyocell process can be nearly infinitely recycled and reused.
In this sense, bamboo lyocell is a closed-loop process and significantly healthier for the environment. There is no run-off to be concerned with like in the viscose process.
3. MECHANICALLY PROCESSED BAMBOO
Mechanically processed bamboo is the most eco-friendly process to create clothing out of bamboo.
Unlike viscose and Lyocell which are chemical and solvent-based processes, mechanically derived bamboo fabric doesn’t rely on chemicals or solvents in any way.
To create bamboo in this manner, the woody parts of the bamboo are crushed and then treated with natural enzymes to create a fiber mash that can then be spun into yarn.
The resulting material is highly absorbent and requires little dyes which is another benefit of this production method. It takes on more of a linen texture compared to the silkiness of lyocell bamboo or viscose bamboo..
Unfortunately for consumers and the environment, the mechanical process to take bamboo from plant to clothing is quite a labor-intensive and expensive activity. So while bamboo linen is the most sustainable option to create clothing it is the least used.
Very little of the bamboo activewear found on racks and online shelves are made through mechanical manufacturing processes.
The point is that not all bamboo fabrics are created equally when it comes to environmental impact.
Is There Such a Thing as Organic Bamboo?
Yes, bamboo can be organic, if it's grown with water and soil that omits the use of certain pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Unfortunately, the vast majority of bamboo used in the production of clothing or other household items is grown in with little oversight of environmental impact and harvesting practices.
While the world recognizes China for its abundant and inexpensive production of bamboo, the country is not widely considered a beacon for environmental sensitivities.
Many exporters of bamboo from China mislead the public by stating their product is “organic” even though they lack the transparency to claim this.
Another watch out is inorganic additives and chemicals that may be used in the process to create clothing out of bamboo. Meaning, even if the raw material is considered organic, the use of synthetic ingredients in the manufacturing process results in textiles that shouldn’t be classified as organic.
Is Bamboo Clothing Biodegradable?
Fiber made out of pure bamboo is biodegradable. Even when bamboo clothing is made via the viscose or Lyocell process, the resulting material will eventually degrade in landfills. However, if the bamboo fiber is blended with a nonbiodegradable fiber like polyester, then the garment is not biodegradable.
This stands in stark contrast to other synthetic textiles like polyester or even recycled materials like Repreve. These fabrics are made from petroleum-based products and like plastic will never fully break down.
Lastly, while it is less common to find, it’s important to remember that bamboo linen (which doesn’t use chemical additives in the manufacturing process) will biodegrade even faster and is less taxing on the environment.
The Final Verdict: Bamboo Clothing Is Mostly Sustainable
So is bamboo clothing sustainable? Hopefully, by this point, you can give a full answer with context and nuance.
Yes, bamboo is a very sustainable and regenerative raw material. But that does not determine whether clothing made from bamboo is similarly eco-friendly.
Ultimately, how “green” bamboo clothing is depended entirely on the manufacturing process. Commonly, bamboo fabric is made via chemical processes that may use harmful and toxic ingredients. But it is possible to make bamboo clothing in an almost perfectly sustainable way using mechanical processes.
There are a number of brands having incredible success that rely on bamboo fabrics in their garments. And they run the gamut of bamboo viscose to mechanically manufactured bamboo. In fact, of the seven break out brands that use bamboo fibers, six still use bamboo viscose, and one uses bamboo lyocell.
Like those seven brands reaching new heights of popularity, the next time you're sourcing sustainable clothing with bamboo- take the extra step to consider where the bamboo came from and how the clothing was manufactured.
Or better yet, consider clothing made from other sustainable materials such as hemp. Mother earth and your customers will thank you.