Bamboo fabric: is it eco-friendly?
Probably every “green” retailer whose product lines include clothing, bedding, or any other textile products carries bamboo products and claims that they are eco-friendly. A short on-line bulletin from the US Federal Trade Commission comes close to calling these claims fraudulent and makes the following points:
- The soft bamboo fabrics on the market today are not made from bamboo fibers. They are rayon.
- Like all rayon, bamboo fabrics are made using toxic chemicals.
- Making fabric from bamboo fibers is expensive, and the cloth does not have the smooth texture of rayon.
- No traits of the original plant remain in the finished rayon–specifically including bamboo’s anti-microbial properties.
- Elsewhere, the FTC even denies that bamboo fabrics are biodegradeable
So is bamboo fabric eco-friendly? Although I link to only one source, I have read numerous descriptions of bamboo fabric. The one I cite happens to deal with more questions than any other single source. Every one of them describe a difference between bamboo linen and bamboo rayon. In other words, the FTC’s bulletin is factually correct but improperly implies that those who claim that bamboo fabric is eco-friendly don’t acknowledge that they are selling rayon.
Bamboo linen
Bamboo linen is made by an ancient mechanical process. Linen itself, of course, is made from flax. The process of extracting the fibers from either plant and making cloth with it are similar enough that reference to bamboo linen should not confuse anyone.
First it is necessary to crush the woody parts of the bamboo and ret them with a natural enzyme. That leaves a gooey mass, which is combed to produce fibers and then spun into yarn. The process is traditionally labor intensive, time consuming, and expensive. The Swiss company Litrax has automated it and manufactures bamboo linen on a large scale. At a very fine thread count, it is probably soft enough to compete with the more common bamboo rayon.
Bamboo rayon
