The Application of Bamboo in the Railway Industry: A Sustainable Solution for Track Construction

The railway industry has shown a strong interest in utilizing sustainable materials, including recycled materials and composites, in construction. Bamboo, as a highly renewable natural resource, has been proposed as a construction material for the railway industry. This material offers several advantages, such as high strength and durability,...

Restoring mangroves with structures: Improving the mangrove habitat using local materials

Mangrove forests effectively function as natural flood defences, and their deforestation has exposed millions of people worldwide to coastal erosion and flooding. Since mangroves require a stable sedimentary environment, stopping coastal erosion is a necessary step for their restoration. Bamboo structures have thus been built to induce accretion...

Wave transmission and drag coefficients through dense cylinder arrays: Implications for designing structures for mangrove restoration

Mangrove vegetation constitutes a natural coastal defence against waves and erosion. Despite their protective role, mangrove ecosystems have experienced continuous degradation over the last decades due to human causes. At retreating mangrove coastlines, bamboo structures are built to create new habitat for mangrove colonization. Existing...

Managing erosion of mangrove-mud coasts with permeable dams – lessons learned

Mangrove-mud coasts across the world erode because of uninformed management, conversion of mangrove forests into aquaculture ponds, development of infrastructure and urbanization, and/or extraction of groundwater inducing land subsidence. The accompanied loss of ecosystem values, amongst which safety against flooding, has far reaching...

Bamboo in the Circular Economy: The potential of bamboo in a zero-waste, low-carbon future

In short, bamboo offers an available, scaleable circular solution to current, linear models of production and consumption. This report should provide policy makers, donors and business investors with a greater understanding of bamboo’s huge potential in the circular economy.

Agricultural Solid Waste as Source of Supplementary Cementitious Materials in Developing Countries

Concrete production utilizes cement as its major ingredient. Cement production is an important consumer of natural resources and energy. Furthermore, the cement industry is a significant CO2 producer. To reduce the environmental impact of concrete production, supplementary cementitious materials such as fly ash, blast furnace slag, and silica...

Environmental Assessment of Industrial Bamboo Products: Life Cycle Assessment and Carbon Sequestration

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the commonly accepted methodology to systematically assess the environmental impact of a material over the full life cycle, from the extraction of resources until the end phase of demolition or recycling (from cradle till grave).<br/>The first objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of the...

Sustainable value chains for bamboo working communities: Integrating the tenets of sustainability through the Rhizome approach

There is a growing demand globally for products which impact sustainability positively. Bamboo fulfills these criteria, since it is a highly renewable timber replacement material which does not cause deforestation. It simultaneously has the potential to create livelihood opportunities for both the urban and rural poor. The eco-friendly potential...

Sustainable value chains for bamboo working communities: Integrating the tenets of sustainability through the Rhizome Approach

There is a growing demand globally for products which impact sustainability positively. Bamboo fulfills these criteria, since it is a highly renewable timber replacement material which does not cause deforestation. It simultaneously has the potential to create livelihood opportunities for both the urban and rural poor. The eco-friendly potential...

Design interventions for stimulating bamboo commercialization - Dutch design meets bamboo as a replicable model

Materials have a considerable impact on the environmental sustainability of the products in which they are used. Due to the increasing population and consumption worldwide, more raw materials are consumed than can be produced globally, making especially resource depletion of both abiotic and biotic resources an urgent problem. Due to its good...