Bamboo As Sustainable Material For Building Construction
Introduction:
Bamboo culm has been widely known as a relatively environmentally friendly and sustainable building material to replace the use of conventional materials such as wood, brick, concrete, and steel. This material has been widely used as the primary building material in many countries, especially in Asia, Africa, and South America. Consequently, it is used for flooring, ceiling, walls, windows, doors, roofs, trusses, and rafters in buildings. Moreover, it is also used as structural material for bridges, water transportation, and skyscraper scaffolding. Bamboo is being addressed as a building material contributing to sustainable development because it shows distinctively qualified environmental, social, and economic benefits. 
Bamboo has a very fast growth rate, so it has been regarded as suitable for afforestation. Bamboo has longitudinal fibers and no cross fibers in its structure. This means that this material is not very suitable for load carrying in cross directions. Moreover, it is said that working fibers in a bamboo beam are those on the top (working for compression) and the bottom (working for tension). The rest of the mass is so called “dead weight”—fibers that don’t take part in load bearing proses. All in all, bamboo hollow structure makes it working worse as a beam than a column or bracing. Bamboo is well known plant for having almost 2 times compressive strength of concrete and almost the same strength to weight ratio like steel in tension forces. This is why buildings made of bamboo are resistance to wind and earthquakes.
Bamboo as sustainable material:
Sustainability is created when 3 main demands are related: environment, society and economy.
1. Environmental aspect:
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is the leading tool for assessment of impact that products and services have on the environment. Since there have been only eight LCA-based studies for bamboo construction materials, including the reference article, instead of the LCA impact categories, this review looks at the following environmental aspects of bamboo-based construction material.
2. Social aspect:
Bamboo by being used as a construction material can have good impact on society. By developing a bamboo based construction industry, it can not only preserve traditional skills but also create new income opportunity and ensure a much stronger social cohesion.
3. Economical aspects:
The economical aspect of bamboo-based materials studied so far consist of the cost of the material and the income opportunities it creates.
Conclusion:
From the advantages and disadvantages of bamboo, we can see that there is majority of positive impact of bamboo in our life. Starting again from bamboo possibility of the fast grows and growing extension is vital nowadays when we are facing with the fact of deforestation. Enlarging forest area, we are provided with bigger CO2 absorption. Bamboo forests can sequester 17 times more carbon dioxide than a normal tree forest and provide natural surroundings for animals. Within an extensive underground network it prevents from soil erosion and can grow even in uncomfortable grounds. Easy to harvest, uses less energy in bamboo clum or plywood production. This plant is biodegradable and recyclable. This means that any bamboo wastes are generated into other textiles or convert into biomass. To sum up positive impact, by bamboo cultivation, this plant provides more jobs for poor and decreases poverty in country of production. Being totally natural product, it is difficult to point out negative impact on environment. This plant is simple and easy to process, so the only disadvantage in sustainable production can be caused by more complex products that require usage of more pesticides and energy. Overall, eco-costs in country of production are very low and they can have bad impact while transported to the country where the plant doesn’t naturally grow.
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