High On Grass

In Consumed: Bamboo: How it became the It Material by seeming a little less like itself.

While new-and-improved products are a constant feature of the consumer landscape, it’s still unusual to encounter novelty in the form of raw material. This may help explain the vogue for bamboo. Obviously this fast-growing plant (it’s actually a grass) is not new, either as a living thing or as the basic stuff of fabricated goods. Think, for example, of 1950’s-era tiki décor or, alternatively, centuries of Asian culture. Even so, bamboo has in the past five years or so gradually acquired a whole new level of popularity in the United States and maybe even a mystique.

One reason for this is its peculiar flexibility as a material. That it can serve as the key ingredient of a hard floor or a soft bed sheet makes it sound like some industrial wonder stuff concocted in a conglomerate’s skunk-works program; that it simply grows out of the ground seems even more wondrous — and wondrous in a way that’s a little more resonant with the present consumer zeitgeist….

Continue reading at the NYT Mag site via this no-registration-required link.

Additional links: David Bergman essay on his “transparent green” idea; Treehugger piece on bamboo ethics; The World Bamboo Organization; American Bamboo Society; Bambooclothes.com.