Bamboo as an eco-friendly alternative to wood

Search for more environment-friendly and sustainable alternatives to many familiar practices is now the trend of the time. And as a country highly vulnerable to environmental hazards, it is an imperative that Bangladesh should opt for such alternatives for as many sectors of the economy as possible. With the woodlands of the country diminishing fast, the country can no more afford the luxury of cutting down its timber trees primarily for construction or woodwork. This refers to both the trees being grown for the purpose of timber and the natural forests where there are standing trees suitable for harvesting as timber. In this connection, the Adviser for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, during her first office day after the Eid holidays stressed the use of bamboo to make furniture instead of wood. Though bamboo is not wood, but a kind of fast-growing hollow-stemmed plant, it is nevertheless used in ways similar to wood. It is definitely a green alternative to synthetic materials like plastic. And by popularising bamboo as a major ingredient of furniture, pressure on wood can be reduced. Bamboo, which is a member of the Poaceae, that is, grass family, grows in abundance in the country's tropical climate. Use of bamboo in the rural area is widespread as a building material for thatched houses, i.e. those with their roofs made from dried grass or straw. However, with the expatriate workers from rural families sending remittance from abroad, the dominant trend in the countryside now is to replace thatched houses with tin sheds on cement floors. Such houses are considered a symbol of status. So, one can see fewer main dwellings or primary residences with thatched roofs on bamboo walls in the rural areas nowadays. Of course, sitting rooms, maybe kitchens and cowsheds  still have thatched roofs. Be that as it may, bamboo has a hundred and one other uses as handicrafts including bamboo mats (chatai), winnowing fans, flat baskets (dalas), fishing traps, sieve or strainers (chaluni), toys, musical instruments, to name but a few. It has also its industrial use as a raw material (bamboo pulp) for paper mills. Once there were entire rural communities in the past whose main occupation was making various household articles from bamboo. One would come across such bamboo-made articles at the village haats or fairs. The traditional arongs, or large Bengali New Year's day village fairs, are the special events when village communities like the nolos (people whose occupation is making various household items from nol, or reed) would sell their bamboo works. Notably, bamboo is also a kind of reed. Needless to say, the survival of such communities who crafted items from bamboo encompassing a wide range of applications from carpentry, furniture-making, weaving to construction was possible only because the countryside in the past had natural bamboo grooves in large numbers.

Unfortunately, with the ever-receding forestlands due to urbanisation, the natural bamboo bushes, too, are getting thinner by the day. In that case, replacing wood with bamboo for making furniture, as the Adviser for Environment has suggested, cannot be a feasible option depending wholly on the still existing natural bamboo groves. The government will have to invest generously in this sector, incentivise entrepreneurs to commercially grow bamboo bushes. Of course, that has to be done without seizing or harming croplands.

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