Bamboo Related Research by Dr Pablo van der Lugt The purpose of this website is to make the bamboo related research executed by Pablo van der Lugt (PhD, MSc) available to the general public. Keywords: bamboo products, sustainability, LCA, carbon footprint, carbon sequestration, design, product development, commercialization, bamboo flooring, bamboo boards. Contents: Pablo van der Lugt (Rotterdam, 1976) gained his interest for bamboo as a building and designers material during an internship at the National Bamboo Project in Costa Rica in 2001. He received his MSc degree at the Faculty of Architecture of Delft University of Technology where he graduated with honours for his MSc thesis about the economical and ecological (LCA) feasibility of the bamboo stem as a building material alternative in Western Europe (see publications nrs 8 & 10). Intrigued by the subject and the potential of industrially processed bamboo as a fast growing hardwood substitute he decided to further investigate the causes of the small market share of bamboo products in the West through his PhD research at the Design for Sustainability program at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of Delft University of Technology. Besides analyzing the problem through value chain analyses during field studies at the production side in bamboo producing countries in Latin America and Asia as well as at the consumption side in Western Europe (see publications nrs. 7 & 9), part of his PhD focused on solving part of the problem through design workshops actively involving professional Dutch designers in the project named Dutch Design meets Bamboo. The project, initiated and coordinated by van der Lugt and organized in collaboration with various organizations and companies, finished with a travelling exhibition, and received a lot of media attention and positive feedback because of the replicable hands-on approach. The prototypes developed during the project - of which several have been successfully commercialized - can be found in van der Lugts book Dutch Design meets Bamboo (see publication nr. 6). Besides analyzing the effectiveness of the design intervention, a large part of the PhD thesis (see publication nr 4) by van der Lugt focuses on assessing the actual environmental sustainability of the use of industrial bamboo materials such as bamboo flooring and bamboo boards in Western Europe based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology and annual yield calculations. He found that various industrial bamboo materialsmade from Moso bamboo score slightly worse in so called eco-costs than wood alternatives grown in Europe, but better than tropical hardwood and abiotic resources such as metals and plastics, for detailed calculations please refer to publications 2, 3 & 4. Recent carbon footprint studies by van der Lugt (publication 1) even show that materials made from Moso bamboo, even when based on use in Western Europe, may be produced CO2 neutral over the full life cycle, if the materials are burnt in the End of Life phase for bio-energy production. Furthermore, an additional environmental advantage of giant bamboo species such as Guadua and Moso, which was not included in the LCA & carbon footprint studies, is the annual yield (m3 material / ha / year). Giant bamboo species such as Guadua outperform even the fastest growing softwood species such as Eucalyptus (for details see publication 1-4) which offers obvious environmental gains with respect to the global depletion of resources. Also, because of the large versatility of bamboo as a resource, the same bamboo species can often be used in many different applications, ranging from low end (e.g. pulp for paper, scaffolding, textile fiber, biofuel) to high end (e.g. bamboo veneer, bamboo flooring, bamboo decking, bamboo boards, design furniture), which is an added advantage compared to most wood species. Van der Lugt has published his research in various scientific journals, technical reports as well as in popular magazines (see publications), and has given several lectures worldwide at international conferences about his research findings. After his PhD, van der Lugt worked as Sustainability Manager at Titan Wood, the producers of acetylated softwood named Accoya®, and as Development Manager Sustainability for the leading Dutch Real Estate developer OVG. Currently van der Lugt heads the Marketing & Development department of MOSO International, the European market leader in industrial bamboo flooring, bamboo decking and bamboo panelling. bambooteam/pablo/
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 00:52:56 +0000
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