Bamboo: The 8th Wonder of the World?
Bamboo: The 8th Wonder of the World? by KOVEREDs Esther-Hope Gibbs
 Over the past 10 years, bamboo has emerged as more than just a gardening aid and stable food of pandas, it has become a highly diverse material used in many of our favourite products. Is it just a passing trend, or are we going to see this abundant grass (yes, the largest member of the grass family!) revolutionize our heavy dependence on oil-based products? We decided it was important to investigate this at KOVEREDLIFE so we have put together some of the most notable uses of bamboo we thought youâd like to know.
 Step back to the 16th century BC and we find the Shang Dynasty in China was widely cultivating bamboo for food, weaponry, sources of heat, building materials and even bamboo tablets for education. OK, so not quite the same as our meaning of tablets, but you get our point.
 Then our research finds us in 6th century Asia, where we see Bamboo being used in medicine, it has 88.8% moisture, 3.9% protein, 0.5% fat, 11% minerals and 5.7% carbs per 100g of its edible portion. For the chemist out there, we know that it contains calcium, phosphorus, iron, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin and vitamin C, making it valuable as a curative for many conditions. [1]
 Jump forward to 1894 AD and youâll find bambooâs first reference in Western product design, patent (No. 8274), where we discover the first bamboo bicycles in England. They were shown at the London Stanley Show of 1894. However, it wasnât until 1947 that the olâ bamboo had its first major break, through Gucci handbags.
Yes, you did read that correctly, world famous fashion designer Gucci actually started a bamboo trend. Whilst this pioneering design first showcases the potential of bamboo in fashion and product design, the Gucci Bamboo Handbags only used bamboo for their handles. The patented process of heat and bend made ground breaking progress, whilst its eco green and environmental benefits werenât fully grasped.
Bamboo has developed through to today where it has been used as fabric. Clothing can be produced without additives, and the feel of the fabric compares to fine silk or cashmere. Great for the summer, it is UV resistant, protecting against the sunâs rays, the fibers are naturally anti-fungal, bacterial and mildew resistant, and it has shown to take natural colour well.
It is being developed for sportswear as the fibers are porous, giving a breathable fabric with natural moisture wicking, taking moisture from the body and transferring it to the garment surface to evaporate keeping the body cool and dry.
It is unclear how many companies are beginning to use bamboo for fabric, many ethical clothing companies have found this as an alternative material to polyesters and oil-based fabrics, and you can even find bamboo baby-grows on ânot-on-the-high-street.comâ. [2]
 Bamboo even offers a solution for packaging, Dell shows us that it is a greener alternative to the foams, plastic, corrugate and paper pulp materials used in packaging a device. They use bamboo as a sustainable and recyclable resource for keeping their lighter products protected, including laptops.[3]
China is the biggest producer of bamboo, followed by India and Myanmar. Asia has 63.3% of the exported market share of bamboo products, whilst Europe is second with 30%. The products are then mostly imported by USA with 36.6% of the market share, followed by the UK with 5%. It is estimated that the world bamboo market stands at around $10bn (ÂŁ6.24bn) today, and the World Bamboo Organisation says it could double in five years.
So what was once a symbol of the Orient, now has a reputation as the mediator between the strength of hardwood and the sustainability of grass. Whilst not new, bamboo certainly shows signs of evolving as a contender to traditional timber species and most prominently as a new, flexible yet durable material in product design. You can buy a pair of bamboo socks, eat bamboo as a staple part of your diet or use it as a fully load-bearing structural beam in your house - and it is said that there are some 1,500 uses for it in between.
 Yet because itâs a grass, bamboo grows faster than any other woody plant in the world. In just five years, most species of bamboo reach maturity, and certain types are known to double in size in a single day. Other popular hard woods barely grow an inch in a week, and several, like oak, can take 120 years to reach maturity. This makes it a great material for us to use in our products at KOVEREDLIFE as it reduces our use of finite materials and it is a great solution and alternative to deforestation. Our research lead to KOVERED teaming up with suppliers governed by the Chinese Bamboo Society (CBS) to ensure the bamboo used in our products is responsibly sourced and is part of a harvesting program that does not endanger the sustainability of the species.
To see other random uses of bamboo read this: http://www.trendhunter.com/tags/bamboo
 If you have an idea about how we could be using bamboo more, or if there is an environmental issue you think we could look into as a Kommunity, then let us know via our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/koveredlife or email us at : âŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚ and donât forget to check out our website regularly to take a look at our new released products! www.koveredlife.com
[1] http://natural-herbal-remedies.knoji.com/bamboos-surprising-medicinal-uses/
  [2] http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/bamboobaby
[3] http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/corp-comm/bamboo-packaging
