Bamboo textiles are fabrics, yarns, and garments made of bamboo fiber. Although historically only used for structural elements, such as busyness and corset ribs, in recent years various technologies have been developed allowing bamboo fibers to be used in a variety of textile and fashion applications. Modern clothing labeled bamboo is usually rayon. Bamboo threads can also be mixed with other textile fibers such as hemp or even spandex.
Video Bamboo textile
Different bamboo fiber forms
Bamboo fibers are all cellulose fibers that are extracted or made from natural bamboo, but they vary greatly.
Textiles that are labeled made of bamboo are not usually made by crushing and tearing mechanically. They are generally synthetic rayon made from cellulose taken from bamboo. Bamboo is used intact and in strips; This strip can be considered a rigid fiber.
Stiff strip
Bamboo can be cut into thin strips and used for baskets.
In China and Japan, thin bamboo pieces are woven together into hats and shoes. One special design of bamboo hats is associated with rural life, which is worn almost universally by farmers and fishermen to protect their heads from the sun.
In the West, bamboo, in addition to other components such as whalebones and steel wires, is sometimes used as a structural component in corsets, busyness, and other structural elements used in fashionable women's clothing.
Bamboo sunshine
Rayon is a semi-synthetic fiber made by remodeling chemical cellulose. Cellulose extracted from bamboo is suitable for processing into viscose rayon (rayon is also made from cellulose from other sources).
Bamboo and soft leaves, the inner core of the hard bamboo rod is extracted using a steaming process and then mechanically destroyed to extract cellulose. Usually cellulose is purified, treated with alkali, dissolved (in carbon disulfide), and rebuilt to make rayon.
Viscose produced from bamboo is promoted as having an environmental advantage over viscose made with cellulose extracted from wood pulp. Bamboo plants can be grown on marginal land not suitable for forestry; although demand for bamboo sometimes leads to deforestation to plant bamboo, although this has become less common since China's forest policy reforms in the 1990s. The viscose process produces the same chemical waste product as wood-pulp viscose, especially carbon disulfide, but bamboo cellulose is suitable for closed-loop viscous processes that capture all the solvents used.
Workers are seriously disadvantaged by the carbon disulfide used to make bamboo viscose. Effects include psychosis, heart attack, liver damage, and blindness. CS 2 fluctuate; rayon workers breathe it, but not found in the finished product. Rayon factories rarely provide information about the limits of exposure and compliance with their work, and legal restrictions even in developed countries are too loose to avoid danger.
Fine bamboo fiber produced mechanically
Some bamboo fibers are made by a mechanical-bacterial process similar to retting flax into linen fibers.
Swiss company Litrax is one of the companies involved in the manufacturing of bamboo fiber. Litrax claims to use a more natural way to process bamboo into fibers. In this case the wooden part of the bamboo is mechanically destroyed prior to the process of retting and washing natural enzymes used to break the walls and extract bamboo fibers. The bark of this tree is then spun into yarn. In good quantities, the yarn has a soft touch. The same manufacturing process is used to produce linen from flax or hemp. Bamboo fabrics made from this process are sometimes called bamboo linen. The natural processing of litrax bamboo allows the fibers to remain strong to produce very high quality products. This process gives a very durable material.
Another way to extract fibers from bamboo, and perhaps the only purely mechanical extraction process anywhere in the world, is practiced in the days before the annual festival of the Kerala Kottiyur Temple, India. Handmade bamboo artifacts, known locally as "odapoovu" are in the form of a white-fiber beam up to one foot in length. This article is made of newly emerging bamboo stems from endemic bamboo to the region ( Ochlandra travancorica ), which through a process back and forth with stones and subsided in water lasting several days, followed by combing to remove the core , leaving a white fiber cream and a bamboo stub. The fibers are too rough and the process is very complicated, to be widely used in making fine yarn, yarn or textiles.
Maps Bamboo textile
Controversy
Workplace safety
There are health threats from making rayon. The making of bamboo rayon, like other rayon making, exposes rayon workers to volatile carbon. Inhaling it causes serious health problems. About 75% of all pollution emissions from bamboo viscose processes occur in the form of air emissions.
While it is possible to protect workers from CS 2 , some legal limits for occupational exposure are still much higher than those recommended by medical researchers. Rayon's factories vary greatly in the amount of CS 2 they expose their workers, and in the information they provide about their quantitative safety limits or how well they take care of them.
Fake ads
Textiles that are labeled made of bamboo are not usually made by crushing and tearing mechanically. They are generally synthetic rayon made from cellulose taken from bamboo.
In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided that unless a thread is made directly with bamboo fibers - often called "mechanically processed bamboo" - it should be called "rayon" or "rayon made of bamboo". The EPA notes that the manufacturing process further purifies cellulose, alters the physical shape of the fibers, and modifies the molecular orientation in fiber and degree of polymerization. The final product is still cellulose, and very similar to rayon made from cellulose from other sources, such as wood pulp.
Agriculture
Manufacturers tout the fact that bamboo can be cultivated quickly, can be used as cash crops to develop poor areas of the third world, and is a natural fiber (compared to popular synthetic ones like polyester) cultivated in greenhouse gas reductions. There may be environmental concerns with clear planting of land for bamboo plantations.
Anti-bacterial claim
Although bamboo fabrics are often advertised as antibacterial, bamboo fabrics so only retain some of the original antibacterial properties of bamboo. Some studies show bamboo-rayon has a certain level of anti-bacterial properties. Studies in China (2010) and India (2012) have investigated the antibacterial properties of bamboo-rayon fabrics against even harsh bacterial levels such as Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. While research in India found that "bamboo rayon showed excellent and durable antibacterial activity against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria", the Chinese study concluded "bamboo pulp fabrics like cotton do not have antimicrobial properties".
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accuses companies of false antimicrobial claims when fibers have been made with rayon. Critics cite a strong cotton lobbying group in influencing FTC decisions, and dismissal from international studies proves otherwise.
Material properties
The bamboo fiber is mechanically processed and the bamboo rayon has very different properties. They look different under scanning electron microscopes (the fibers that are mechanically produced have nodes). Bamboo rayon varies in physical properties, as expected from various properties in other rayon.
Composite bamboo and biopolymer construction
There are various approaches to the use of bamboo in composites and as additives in biopolymers for construction. In this case, as opposed to bamboo fabrics for clothing, bamboo fibers are extracted through mechanical needle stitch and friction or through a process of steam explosion where bamboo is injected with steam and placed under pressure and then exposed to the atmosphere where a small explosion inside the bamboo is due to the release of steam allows for the collection of bamboo fibers. Bamboo fibers can be in the form of pulp whose material is very smooth and in a powder state.
Ecological considerations
Growth
Bamboo has many advantages over cotton as raw material for textiles. Reaching up to 35 meters (115Ã, ft) tall, bamboo is the largest member of the grass family. They are the fastest growing timber plant in the world. One Japanese species has been recorded growing more than 1 meter (3.3 feet) a day. There are more than 1600 species found in various climates from cold mountains to hot tropical regions. Approximately 40 million hectares of earth is covered with bamboo, mostly in Asia. High growth rates of bamboo and the fact that bamboo can grow in various climates make bamboo a sustainable and versatile resource.
The type of bamboo used for clothing is called Moso bamboo. Moso bamboo is the most important bamboo in China, where it covers about 3 million hectares (about 2% of China's total forest area). It is a major species for bamboo wood and plays an important role for the ecological environment.
Harvest
After new shoots emerge from the ground, the new sugar cane reaches its peak in just eight to ten weeks. Each cane reaches maturity in three to five years. It is grass and regenerates after being cut like grass without the need for replanting. This routine logging is really beneficial to plant health - studies have shown that stick felling leads to a strong regrowth and an increase in the amount of biomass next year.
Results and land use
Land use is important globally because seven billion people in the world compete for water, food, fiber, and shelter. Sustainable land-use practices provide economic and environmental benefits. Bamboo can be used as food, fiber and shelter and because of its ease of growth and remarkable growth rates it is a cheap, sustainable and efficient plant. Bamboo grows very dense, its clumping properties allow much to be planted in relatively small areas, reducing pressure on land use. With the average yield for bamboo up to 60 tons per hectare exceeds the average yield of 20 tons for most trees and the average yield of 2 tons per hectare for cotton, the high yield of bamboo per hectare becomes very significant.
Greenhouse gases
Growing forests absorbs CO 2 but deforestation produces fewer trees to absorb CO 2 . Bamboo minimizes CO 2 and generates up to 35% more oxygen than an equivalent tree stand. One hectare of bamboo seizes 62 tons of carbon dioxide per year while one hectare of young forest only seizes 15 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
Deforestation
The planting of bamboo can slow deforestation, providing an alternative source of wood for the construction industry and cellulose fibers for the textile industry. This allows people to turn away from the destruction of their native forests and build commercial bamboo plantations that can be selectively harvested annually without destroying forests. Planting trees should be felled and terminated at harvest time but bamboo continues to grow. When the bamboo rod is cut down, it will produce another shoot and ready to be harvested again in just one year. Compare this with the cotton of harvested organic cotton requires the destruction of whole plants that cause bare ground to be roasted in the sun and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Before planting crops next year cotton farmers to fields that release more CO 2 .
Water usage
Very few irrigated bamboo and there is strong evidence that the water usage efficiency of bamboo is twice that of the tree. This makes bamboo better able to handle harsh weather conditions such as droughts, floods and high temperatures. Compare bamboo with cotton which is a thirsty plant - it takes up to 20,000 liters of water to produce 1 kg of cotton and 73% of the global cotton harvest comes from irrigated land, Some estimates indicate that cotton is the largest water user among them. all agricultural commodities.
Soil erosion
Replanting of crops such as cotton annually leads to soil erosion. The vast roots of the bamboo system and the fact that it is not uprooted during harvest means bamboo actually helps protect the soil and prevent soil erosion. Rooting systems of bamboo plants create an effective watershed, uniting the soil together along the fragile river banks, deforested areas and in places prone to mudslides. It also greatly reduces rainfall runoff. Conventional cotton planting also causes severe degradation of soil quality through the constant impact of pesticide use on soil organisms.
Biodegradable
Just like other cellulose-based clothing materials, bamboo fibers are biodegradable in soil by micro-organisms and sunlight. After reaching the end of their useful life, clothing made of bamboo can be composted and disposed of in an organic and environmentally friendly way.
Pesticides and fertilizers
The great benefit of using bamboo as an organic base for textile fibers is that it does not need pesticides or fertilizers when planting bamboo. However, applications of herbicides and fertilizers are common in some places to encourage the growth of edible shoots. Bamboo also contains a substance called bamboo-kun - an antimicrobial agent that gives plants a natural resistance to pest and fungus attacks, although some pathogenic problems still exist in some bamboo plantations.
In contrast, only 2.4% of the world's fertile land is cotton-grown, but cotton accounts for 24% of the world's insecticide market and 11% of global pesticide sales. Many of these pesticides are dangerous and toxic.
An estimated 1 million to 5 million cases of pesticide poisoning occur each year, resulting in 20,000 deaths reported among agricultural workers and at least 1 million requiring hospitalization. Even organic cotton farms use pesticides - copper and copper salts.
Fertilizer is also applied to cotton fields to increase the growth rate and yields.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia