Bamboo based fabric, is it really Bamboo?

Thanks for this info. I have a lot to think about. My thoughts are that in the actual growing process of cotton v bamboo, the bamboo would come out far ahead environmentally. I wonder if this is balanced in the processing? Cotton farming also used way more water. Getting very confused.

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That’s a different sort of question. It may be a factor for some.

Aside from the growing of cotton vs bamboo both also have processing impacts on the environment.

From what has been commented on so far the production of bamboo fabric using the traditional cellulose process to produce rayon type yarn is a poor environmental outcome. Improved recycling of the processing chemicals in the similar process used to produce Tencel seems to be a better choice. Although that process can just as easily produce the same quality of product from more than just bamboo.

Environmentally it might be useful to consider whether eucalyptus trees are a preferable source of Tencel yarn compared to bamboo rayon or Tencel. Eucalypts can be very water efficient and grow in a wide range of environments without the need for irrigation.

While I’m not against using textiles made from bamboo, it’s far from clear how individual products have been produced. There is scant concise detail on many of the on line suppliers web sites to clarify. Few reveal all of the details concerning the sources and processing of their products. I simply assume that 98% of all products promoted as bamboo textiles are actually manmade synthetic fibres produced from bamboo cellulose. And perhaps some other fibre sources. Note cotton waste can also be used to produce rayon.

I’m assuming from what I have read, a product attributed to being made from unaltered natural bamboo fibre will readily crease and hold creases. Otherwise it is a manmade synthetic based product, possibly priced at a premium to the true wholesale value.

Unravelling the confusion may be a challenge. There is power in branding and the appealing attributes of real bamboo. It would appear the benefits of bamboo textiles are the same as similarly produced cellulose based synthetic yarns.

Some more on Tencel, no need for bamboo either.

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I find a thicker base sheet and a light top sheet are the best for comfort and 100% cotton or if you can afford the expense linen. If I could easily source hemp sheets I might be inclined to go that way rather than cotton or linen.

Why the thicker base sheet? Because it adsorbs more moisture during sleep so doesn’t feel sticky or damp during the night (this creates discomfort for us). The lighter top sheet allows the heat to move off easily. This means we don’t buy sets, we buy individual pieces to suit our needs, my wife prefers a thicker pillowcase as she sweats a lot from her head during the night, I prefer a lighter feel under my head.

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The production of Rayon is incredibly toxic. That’s why it is not made in any first world country any more.
the label Bamboo is most often a con. It really should be banned. I recently looked at a “Bamboo” coffee cup. It was made of melamine with bamboo fibre as a filler.

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That is true, and the US Federal Trade Commission has issued a warning about ‘bamboo’ material…and that the claims that it is bamboo could be misleading.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0122-bamboo-fabrics

What is also concerning looking at some of the Bamboo sheets available online from Australian retailers, is they claim they are made with 100% organic bamboo…when the fabric is Lyocell, very similar to rayon with a slightly different chemical/manufacturing process. These are some examples, but everyone I looked at is the same…

This is definitely shonky and possibly one for Choice to expose.

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Not the only time bamboo textiles have rated a mention.
https://choice.community/t/false-bamboo-fabric-claims/18383

Or this one from Jen. The supplier has claimed that paper made from bamboo is more eco friendly than pine trees. Yes, they have left out the dyes and prints. The basic process of manufacture will be the same?
Softness might be more a consequence of processing than the raw fibre properties?

Australia produces loo paper from local wood chip, native forests or weed species of pine trees natural in the USA and Carribean. Bamboo is also very weedy, more so when introduced to Australia. Both are sustainable forest products. Although in practice exploitation has replaced natural diversity with mono cultures.

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I like bamboo I have a bamboo pillow and it is excellent , my only reservation is how long it takes to dry after washing , mr reason for saying this is my husband has bamboo socks , and they never finish drying as cotton does even in a clothes dryer , they take many hours longer eg at least overnight ,so I would be cautious about sheets

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I see many things like socks made from bamboo as I don’t like traditional cotton as I sweat to much. I find the bamboo combination with other materials to be effective at reducing the sweat. Sometimes they don’t last as long but are comfortable to wear. I cannot comment on bamboo for sheeting. I notice that it is either marketed as being eco friendly and sustainable. Not sure what you think about those terms.

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Yes I agree socks I have take longer but over the years I found I was, sweating to much in cotton I found bamboo blended with other materials to be effective less smell less sweat. I’ll bear in mind about sheets.

I question these terms applies to the fabrics. While the production of raw bamboo fibre may be both environmentally friendly and sustainable, the transformation into a man made fabric isn’t. The only one which may qualify for eco and sustainable material is raw bamboo linen. As outlined by @mark_m, this may not be the most comfortable material to use as sheeting, if in fact there is a sheet manufacturer which uses such materials.

This website is enlightening in relation to such claims…

https://wearnothingnew.typepad.com/wear-nothing-new/2011/02/environmental-impacts-of-fabric-bamboo.html

While it discusses principally rayon/viscose made from bamboo fibres, the other two materials (modal and lyocell) are also made using similar processes. Modal is not much better than rayon manufacture, while lycocell is better as it generally uses a closed loop system in its manufacture, and the process used to break down the bamboo cellulose is different.

The Guardian also questioned these claims as well…

To me it is a form of greenwashing.

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As pointed out by others in this topic it is very very unlikely that you have “bamboo” in your linen or socks. What you are more likely to have is a fabric that was originally sourced from bamboo fibres but no longer is bamboo. If your material was made from the same fabric but sourced from say gum trees you would have the same benefits (and issues) that you have now from a bamboo sourced fabric.

The benefit, and only perhaps at that, is that bamboo grows fast, and is renewable. But much the same can be said of many plants that can be used as the raw material for the chemical and industrial processing required to produce the fabrics.

As @phb states the use of the term “bamboo” is more likely to make it appear that the product is more natural in some way (greenwashing), when in fact it is the result of a lot of chemical processing.

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Some BS Buster badges have been awarded for some of the posts above, Congratulations to those who received them.

Please keep the responses coming.

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I did not know that it was a contest or I could have dressed myself in some of the litter from our Murray Island Bamboo and our China Dwarf Bamboo.

On second thought, that may have breached ethical standards.

image

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Q: How ‘green’ is bamboo textile? A: Much more ‘brown’ than ‘green’.

Having a Ph D in organic chemistry and 30-years’ experience specialising in the chemistry of cellulose working for Australia’s largest pulp and paper company and for CSIRO I feel well-qualified to answer this question without resorting to any fake news or gilding of the lily.

Put simply, textiles made from bamboo using the viscose rayon process (artificial silk by another name) creates so much pollution that the process cannot be carried out in any country with stringent environmental regulations. The rayon plants that were a feature of Europe and America in the first half of the 20th century have all had to close because they were too polluting. Today, plants practising the viscose process are confined to countries like China, India and Laos where environmental laws are ‘more honoured in the breach than the observance’ or simply do not exist.

The problem is not with the bamboo, but with the viscose process. In order to create viscose fibre suitable for making soft absorbent fabrics, wood chips, or bamboo chips must be treated with chemicals, sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide at high pressure and temperature, then with chlorine dioxide, more sodium hydroxide and hydrogen peroxide. These two chemical processes, called pulping and bleaching respectively, create cellulose fibre pulps that are suitable for making white paper of the type used for making writing paper and printing papers, but not textiles. In order to convert the cellulose fibres used to make paper into a form called ‘regenerated cellulose’ that can be extruded and spun into rayon fibre for weaving textiles, two more process must be carried out. Firstly, the pulp must be treated with strong sodium hydroxide to dissolve materials called ‘hemicelluloses’ and to swell (or mercerise) the cellulose fibres so that the chemicals used in the second step can penetrate more quickly. It is one chemical in particular used in the second stage that creates the pollution – a highly flammable and poisonous liquid called carbon disulfide. When mixed with sodium carbonate solution in water, carbon disulfide forms a chemical called sodium xanthate that can dissolve cellulose – one of very few chemicals that can dissolve cellulose without destroying it. The cellulose pulp slowly dissolves in the xanthate solution over 24 hours to form a very viscous yellow liquid called ‘dope’. After curing for another 24 hours, the dope is extruded through minute holes in a metal plate into a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid in water forming threads of viscose rayon that can be washed and spun into rayon thread for weaving into sheets, socks and towels as advertised. But what is left in the water? Water contaminated with acid and salt and carbon disulfide most of which sinks to the bottom of the tank and is recycled. So far, so good. And if that were the end of the story the bamboo fabric would be ‘green’. But it’s not the end of the story by a long way. While most of the carbon disulfide is insoluble in the contaminated water, a small proportion of it actually remains dissolved in the contaminated water and, despite efforts by many scientists and engineers over decades, no one has found a way of cleaning this contaminated water in an economic way that will enable it to be discharged into a river or the sea without killing every living organism for miles around. Hence the need to move the viscose process to countries where employment, development and profits have higher priorities than the health of the environment. Viscose rayon fabric, whether made from bamboo or wood, is BAD, BAD, BAD and certainly NOT ‘GREEN’!

Some fabrics made from cellulose do have environmental advantages, particularly those made from cotton and linen so long as the irrigation of the cotton plants does not cause rivers down stream to dry up and so long as the ‘retting’ of the flax used in making linen doesn’t involve making polluted ‘run-off’ into nearby waterways. All fabrics shed microfibres and nanofibers when they are laundered, and these minute fibres have been found everywhere, from layers in the deepest ocean trenches to the snowfields of the Himalayas as well as in the flesh of the seafoods that we eat. In this case, the problem is synthetic fibres made from crude oil, polyester, nylon, Lycra – the list is almost endless. These synthetic fibres do not biodegrade in human lifetimes and the tiny fibres discharged from every laundry on the planet just accumulate. Cotton and linen fabrics shed tiny cellulose fibres in the same way but because cellulose is the most abundant natural polymer on Earth, bacteria and marine fungi have evolved to use it as a food source and cellulose microfibres do not accumulate like their cousins based on crude oil. Even viscose rayon sheds microfibres made from cellulose which are biodegradable, but because of the toxic carbon disulfide released during production, they cannot be called ‘green’ or sustainable.

As a result of the paradox resulting from the advantages of cellulose-based fabrics coupled with the problems with carbon disulfide use, scientists in America and Britain searched for an alternative to sodium xanthate that could be used to dissolve cellulose and make regenerated cellulose fibre. Success was achieved in the 1970s and 1980s when an organic chemical called NMMO was discovered and developed into a process called the Lyocell® Process. The advantage of NMMO is that only water is needed to cause the fibres to precipitate from the dope and 100% of the NMMO can be reclaimed and recycled – pollution problem solved. Unfortunately, the Lyocell® Process costs more to operate than the viscose process. Regenerated cellulose fabrics made using the Lyocell® Process can be purchased under the brand names Tencel® and Modal® including fabrics made from bamboo and these are indeed ‘green’, but they are more expensive than those made by the viscose process. So, the moral is: ‘if you wish to be environmentally responsible, don’t buy rayon and don’t buy bamboo sheets, towels or socks UNLESS the label says Tencel® or Modal®’.

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Is this Sodium Ethyl Xanthate as used in flotation in mining? or it’s cousin Sodium Isopropyl Xanthate? or is it another Xanthate?

I know the first two from my time at Mt Isa.

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The Guardian looked at the environmental sustainable claims of Lyocell, and it doesn’t seem as easy as just chemical processes used in its production. It appears its manufacture uses significant amounts of energy to produce and the source of energy used may affect environmental claims.

It appears that majority of Lyocell is produced in China (where around 65-70% of electricity is from coal and gas, including being generated from local poor quality resources - in generators where emission controls are often lax) which would challenge such claims.

Other facets of environmental claims were presented in the Guardian article in an earlier post in the thread.

Its manufacturing process is only one factor to consider.

It would be interesting to know your thoughts on NMMO and claims that the final fabric is 100% (certified?) organic or 100% natural, which is often used to market the fabric’s products. While NMMO, 4-methylmorpholine 4-oxide, is an organic (that is being carbon based) compound, is it organic in sense of organic product claims? This question is in the context that NMMO is a synthesised compound and man-made bamboo based fabrics are different to their raw counterparts.

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Thanks for the question. All chemicals containing the name xanthate are made by reacting sodium carbonate with carbon disulfide. So, while not precisely the same compound as the sodium ethyl xanthate and sodium isopropyl xanthate used in mining operations as flotation agents, sodium xanthate and sodium amyl xanthate (both used in making rayon) are part of the same family of chemicals. Xanthates are used in mining operations because they bind strongly to particles of metal sulfides in the ores are toxic and subject to workplace regulation. Tailings dams, as an example, that contain residual sodium ethyl or isopropyl xanthate dissolved in the water must not be allowed to spill into waterways. The difference between use of xanthates as floatation agents and use in making rayon is the reaction with dilute hydrochloric acid used to precipitate the rayon fibre and which also releases carbon disulfide into the water. Carbon disulfide is much more toxic than sodium xanthate and the release of liquid effluent from rayon plants in China, India and Laos is reportedly not subject to the sort of restrictions that would apply in Europe, the US or Australia. You can find out more about the chemicals by going to wikipedia.com and typing the name of the chemical into the search field.

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Thank you for the Guardian article. Like most articles written by journalists who don’t have a strong background in science, this one misses some important details. Tencel® is not made by simply grinding small pieces of wood or bamboo and dissolving them in NMMO. In order for Tencel® fibres (and other fibres made using the Lyocell® process) to be made, the wood and bamboo must first have the lignin and hemicelluloses removed from them. This is achieved by chemical pulping in the same way that pulps for conventional paper making are made using either the kraft process or the sulfite process followed by bleaching with chlorine dioxide and hydrogen peroxide. Paper making pulps cannot be used directly because they still contain more than 2% of hemicelluloses that must be removed by soaking in 20% sodium hydroxide solution in order to make ‘dissolving pulp’ – also known as alpha-cellulose a material that contains no more than 2% hemicelluloses. Dissolving pulps, mainly made from wood, as the Guardian article states, are used for making a wide range of cellulosic chemicals in addition to viscose rayon and Tencel® fibres. Examples are carboxymethyl cellulose that is used as a thickening agent in many processed foods like soups and ice-cream, cellulose acetate used as the backing for photographic films, overhead transparencies and cigarette filters, cellulose trinitrate that is used as an explosive and methyl cellulose used in hair gels and other cosmetic products. All these products are ‘organic’ in the scientific sense that means they contain carbon in their molecular structures. My own opinion is that they are not ‘organic’ in the sense that fruit or vegetables might be described to be organic if they are grown on a farm that does not use synthetic insecticides, herbicides or fertilisers. That said, most materials based on cellulose based fibres, including paper, cardboard, cotton, linen, hemp, sisal, Tencel® and rayon have environmental advantages over materials made from crude oil because of the biodegradability of cellulose and the fact that the base feedstock used, whether it is wood, bamboo, hemp, flax or sisal is produced by plants that use photosynthesis to convert CO2 into cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Use of fossil carbon sources like crude oil, coal and natural gas cannot make that claim. I understand that even cellulose acetate does biodegrade, but much more slowly than cellulose itself. As for the energy used in making Tencel® versus the energy used in growing and processing cotton and linen, the last two fabrics require regular ironing in order to remove wrinkles caused by laundering whereas Tencel® fabric claims to be ‘minimum care’ with little or no pressing and ironing required after washing. I suspect that the energy used in pressing and ironing a kilogram of ‘natural’ fabric over the life of the garment would far outweigh the energy used in making a kilogram of Tencel® if it needed pressing and ironing much less often. The principles of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) must be applied to all materials used by humans before valid comparisons about relative ‘sustainability’ of products can be made.

As for NMMO, yes, it is a synthetic chemical made from crude oil and ammonia and it also requires input of energy to produce it and transport it as do the majority of chemicals that societies rely upon for their daily food, shelter, health and entertainment. In an ideal world, all the energy required would come from the sun, through wind farms, photovoltaic cells and tidal energy production, but we aren’t there yet. It is a moot point in my opinion as to whether the use of coal to power industries in developing countries to lift billions of people out of grinding poverty over the last five decades can be justified on social and environmental grounds. I’m certain that we should be fighting the vested interests in 2020 and beyond that seek to slow the movement away from a fossil carbon economy to a solar carbon and hydrogen economy because climate change resulting from release of fossil carbon is undoubtedly real. Because the NMMO used to produce Tencel® and related cellulose based fabrics is recycled at greater than 99.5%, my opinion is that the Lyocell Process is a valuable step towards sustainability in the textile industries. As with all chemicals, its use in the workplace must be subject to stringent regulation in order to protect workers. The limited information available on the toxicity of NMMO suggests that it will cause skin irritation if spilled on the skin (like most oxidants including hydrogen peroxide) but there is no evidence that I can find that it causes cancer: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/4-Methylmorpholine-N-oxide#section=WIPO-PATENTSCOPE

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Hi @douglaspaine, Thank you for your detailed and considered information. It is a lot to digest (apologies for the pun) and am sure that it will be of interest to Choice.

It has become clear that the cellulose used to make ‘bamboo’ fabrics no longer resembles the natural or raw form of bamboo. It is interesting that many websites which sell ‘bamboo’ fabrics claim they are natural or organic. While the cellulose in the manufacture of the manmade product may come from natural or potentially organic certified products, the final ‘bamboo’ fabric appears to be at some distant from when it was first harvested from a stand of bamboo. Some of the processes used in its manufacture seem to go against what one would normally consider ‘natural’ or ‘organic’.

I agree with some of your comments about making LCAs and also energy inputs into the process. Some of the marketing material I have seen focuses on one main point, that the bamboo is from organic certified/sustainable bamboo forests… and unfortunately glance over the fabric’s production. Marketing materials tend also in some cases to demonise other fabrics which it compete with (cotton, organic cotton, and other synthetic fibres).

I should also say that I am not against the use or manufacture of ‘bamboo’ fabrics or any fabric, as each fabric from cradle to grave has its advantages and disadvantages (including enjoyment of it use). I am concerned that some of the information about ‘bamboo’ fabrics may be misleading those consumers who have made ethical or informed decisions based on this marketing information. They may have made these decisions without understanding the full consequence/impacts of its production.

The information you have provided is enlightening and allows consumers to better understand what ‘bamboo’ fabrics are. Thanks again.

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I used to purchase Bamboo socks, because I thought they would act the same as cotton socks, but they went into holes much faster than other socks. Because I have to wear them every day all day most days, cotton socks seem to be hard to find. . So whether they were bamboo or not there is no way of knowing, but I won’t be buying them anymore.

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