I bought a bamboo and plant fiber based toothbrush a few weeks ago. It's quite soft, fantastic. The package it came in resembled the strong, wax paper plastic of cereal bags but it was plant based, 100% compostable. Why are we not using that for more commercial applications?
Screw the cost. Plastic needs to go.
It’s my understanding is that bamboo in any form other than wood is not that ecological. The energy costs and the chemicals used to soften the bamboo supposedly make it a very poor trade off in that respect.
So if your buying “environmental” bamboo pajamas because you wanted to save the environment… you might be a bit disappointed.
BTW, Your toothbrush might be ok if the bamboo was used just for the handle.
R, you wrote that as if i'm naive about the sources of sustainable products that we try to buy. I'm guessing you don't know much about my background. I had a longer post for this that was backed by a few scientific articles on bamboo processing and sustainability (including processing of bamboo fibers using enzymes and mechanical rather than chemical means) but decided keep it simple:
Disappointed with the environmental impact of bamboo vs a plastic toothbrush?
I'm going to assume you are joking.
Take a look into the journal articles. Lots of publications on research into bamboo sustainable use in tons of ways, different processing methods, different products. Processing white paper products was once a horribly damaging industry here in Canada and much has changed in 20+ years in that industry alone.
