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Is there a pressing need to replace wood? I think, at least in the USA, most wooden goods are made from cheap soft woods that grow quickly, and can basically be
by blt 8y ago
Is there a pressing need to replace wood? I think, at least in the USA, most wooden goods are made from cheap soft woods that grow quickly, and can basically be treated as an agricultural commodity. Are trees inefficient at converting light/water/nitrogen to cellulose?
- Klathmon 8y agoWell i think it's more that bamboo grows significantly faster than even the cheapest woods. FFS some species of bamboo can grow over an inch an hour!
- vram22 8y agoYes, I don't have data (can be looked up), but I've read that some bamboo species grow really fast.
- vram22 8y agoThere's also this interesting and devastating phenomenon I read about a while ago: in some places where bamboo grows (IIRC, one or more of the north-eastern Indian states, like Assam, is one of them), there are periodic famines or at least great shortages of food, and hence human deaths or migration, due to rats breeding like mad due to bamboo's flowering (which the rats eat - could be flowers or seeds) or something, every some number of years, and then when the bamboo food is over, they invade human habitation to continue getting food. Not sure if it is a solved problem yet. Update: Just googled about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mautam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mautam