By Lorraine Smith, Sustainability Consultant

With all the fur flying over whether or not bamboo is an environmentally friendly fabric, there are some mighty fuzzy points being made. One of them appears to hinge on its biodegradability. The pro-bamboo folks would like us to believe that it will breakdown if tossed into our backyard composter; while the bamboo “booers” would rather we think not. Things heat up even more when it comes to, “It is rayon”! “It is not rayon”! “It is too”! And suddenly I am reminded of fights that would break out between me and my sisters over who the prized shirt really belonged to.

Facts: These are not always readily available, especially now that we can google everything and everyone is an expert. Personally I’m leery of information I find in marketing materials that is NOT footnoted or backed up by a reputable third party (which, to be honest, is the case with a lot of marketing materials—not just those in bamboo land). But there are facts out there about many important pieces of this discussion, such as:

• How bamboo fabric is made - Like many other worthy fabrics made from cellulosic material, bamboo is a form of rayon. Of course this can get confusing (even with facts) because rayon is a word that is used to mean many things, including a type of raw material, a process, and a fabric. This would be akin to describing coat fabric as “wool” (raw material), “combed” (fibre processing) and “tweed” (finished fabric), except with rayon we are saying “rayon”, “rayon” and “rayon”. Why? Because most people really don’t know how trees come to be grown, mashed up, and turned into yarn and then fabric, but the word has been bandied about so much that it’s come to mean a lot of those things anyway. We may have a foggy notion that the viscose process plays a role, or that there is a forest product lurking in there, but often we don’t even know that. Rayon was first developed in the 1880’s and it has continued to evolve, using different plant-based materials, some of which can be (and are) harvested more responsibly than others. Nonetheless, it is an industry term, and most bamboo fabric out there is a form of rayon. This tells us very little about its “eco” factor.
• How biodegradable, anti-bacterial, absorbent, soft, insulating bamboo actually is—This is where things get interesting when we want facts. Fabric can be produced with a wide range of variations at each point along the manufacturing process. With bamboo, this would include the way the plant is pulped and liquefied, extruded into filament, spun, plied, dyed, finished, knit or woven, cut and sewn, embellished and finished again. To simply say it is bamboo overlooks all of these processes, each of which can affect how the results play out. There are companies dedicated to testing fabric (and other products) to make sure they meet regulations (for example with regard to toxicity, flammability, etc) and they can also test for any of the other points being touted with bamboo. Many of these test results would not be divulged to the general public, partly because they wouldn’t mean much to most of us, and partly because it can be proprietary information. This is potentially a deep and confusing space when we want to get real facts on all of these points. Which leads us to relevance…

Relevance: The real issue at stake here is not whether or not bamboo is biodegradable, but whether or not it is having a negative impact on the environment, or at least, more negative than its textile peers. This is where some analysis would be useful to make sure MarketingSpeak doesn’t accidentally make its way into the fact pile. Let’s revisit some of the points tossed about, which are often used in the eco-friendly debate:

1.  Firstly, whether or not it biodegrades is really only relevant to the end-of-product-life stage of clothing. In other words, if it goes into landfill, it will biodegrade (how quickly depends on the landfill itself, but that’s another story). There are many points along the product life cycle before this end—including extracting raw materials, manufacturing, distribution, and consumption— during which there is great opportunity for environmental impact (or the minimizing thereof) that is arguably much more significant than the final stage. Why are we so hung up on the end stage? If anything, it would be far more eco- friendly for a clothing company to advertise that they have thought about the end of the product’s life and come up with a way to reuse or at least recycle it. Throwing it into landfill is the last possible thing we want to see happening with anything, biodegradable or not.

2.  Further, again assuming the lab tells us it is biodegradable, we are led to believe from the fans of bamboo that this makes it environmentally preferable over other fabrics. However the real inference here is that it’s preferable over other so-called “man- made” fabrics, i.e. polyester. Approximately 41% of the world’s textiles are still made from natural fibres (which excludes the regenerated cellulosics such as rayon, Modal and Tencel) including wool, cotton, silk, and mohair, all of which are biodegradable. Without being specific about what it’s compared to, simply touting its biodegradability is confusing and not entirely relevant. In other words it suggests it is biodegradable where “others” are not, but this isn’t really the whole story.

So is bamboo’s renewability in fact an asset? It certainly can be, but without relevant information about how the bamboo is grown and harvested, we are really seeing the word “renewable” in a vacuum. Cotton is very much renewable, but we know that there can be serious issues with excessive water use, as well as pesticides when it is not organically grown. Further there are ethical issues concerning the use of genetically modified (GM) cotton, as well as the use of child labour in some regions. So in other words, simply being renewable is not the same as being environmentally low impact.

In order for its renewability to be relevant, buyers of bamboo fabric need the facts. This would include third party certified data showing that the source of bamboo is being cultivated in a way that meets international social and environmental standards. And then it isn’t really about renewability, but rather about low impact and therefore preferable results on the environment.

These points may seem like splitting hairs, but if we are going to save the planet, we better make sure the actions we are taking are actually having an environmentally positive impact. The cotton industry received so much scrutiny that it had to respond. While it can take a long time to make change on a massive scale, we are nonetheless seeing a growth in the global crop of organically grown and/or fair-trade certified cotton. Further, even the conventional cotton growers are showing measured pesticide reduction, implementing alternate irrigation methodology, etc. Likewise the wool industry is adapting practices that seek to minimize overgrazing and animal cruelty. In both of these cases, we see change happening in industries that have been globally active for centuries.

Meanwhile the world of bamboo production is relatively new, and the level of transparency and access to data is not quite as evolved as its old-school textile peers. All the recent discussion being generated on the matter will hopefully improve this to a degree. And so anyone interested in using bamboo fabric should be encouraged to do so if it meets his or her needs. If they wish to improve the state of the planet while they’re at it, they will need to ask all the same questions that they would of any other fabric, or product in general for that matter: what are the impacts at each point along the product life cycle? Often all the information won’t be there, and without clear data about how it is environmentally preferable, and in relation to what specifically, it will be inconclusive. The way to improve is not to blindly increase our loyalty to one fibre type, but rather to demand overall improvement in production standards and transparency, to keep asking for and listening to scientific data, and to measure the impacts of our own decisions.