Home & Garden Green Living

Bamboo Furniture As an Earth Friendly Option

In the state of environmental awareness the planet currently finds itself under, many people are curious on what they can do on a personal level to reduce their carbon footprint, particularly when considering new household items and furnishings.
And while common woods can be grown and harvested into usable materials in self-sustainable organic farming settings, bamboo is widely considered to be eco-friendly without the high labor effort and excess organic maintenance costs.
Furthermore bamboo growth is proven to not only promote soil nutrient retention and higher oxygen release, but also is an effective tool in erosion control.
Bamboo grows at an incredible rate of almost 24 inches a day for some species, and it rarely needs any synthetic chemical fertilization allowing the majority of bamboo lumber to be naturally organic.
However in many cases this is negated by using man made chemical treatments and stains.
One way some bamboo furniture manufacturers have found to retain the eco-friendly nature of the bamboo is to apply a natural organic tung oil which is quickly becoming the preferred method of finishing in "green" furniture building companies.
While tung oil is somewhat comparable to linseed or soybean oil, it provides a much tougher and water resistant finishing while maintaining its light, golden color over time.
Since bamboo is not technically a wood but a grass it has an amazingly quick regrowth or regeneration rate, sometimes as fast as 5 years for whole forests as compared to 30-60 for tree forests.
And while many traditional wood materials have high durability and lasting power, bamboo can offer the same characteristics while at the same time providing a tension strength similar to steel in some cases.
Along with that, bamboo has the ability to be stretched into almost any imaginable shape, allowing for unique design structures that would be nearly impossible with woods such as oak and maple.
What gives bamboo this advantage is its extraordinarily high level of heat resistance when it is first harvested, upwards of 400 degrees.
This allows the bamboo to be heated and stretched where more traditional woods would simply burn or warp.
Once the bamboo is heated to these temperatures it can be molded in almost the same way heated metals can, and then once cooled retain these shapes while maintaining the high strength and durability that bamboo lumber is known for.
While eco- friendly furniture is becoming more and more popular it is difficult to know what companies actually provide self sustainable forest materials and finishes for their products.
Please visit (Site Name) for more information and a look into the right way to provide an eco-friendly furniture option.


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