Celebrate EARTH DAY! WORLD BAMBOO DAY 18 September Please share WORLD BAMBOO DAY on the 18th of September, to help promote the promise of bamboo! Bamboo is Better Because….. For centuries bamboo has played an indispensable role in the daily life of millions of people around the world. Recently it has gained an increasing importance worldwide as a substitution for timber and for a wide range of other innovative products and potentials. Bamboo is a vital resource for mankind. Its wide distribution throughout the world overlaps with hundreds of millions of people, animals and invertebrates who depend on it as a daily essential. With thousands of uses, as food, clothing, paper, fiber, shelter, and inspiration, bamboo has traditionally contributed to the multiple physical requirements and spiritual needs of mankind. No other plant has such myriad of uses; bamboo can be transformed into hundreds of products, such as shoots for food, poles for agriculture and structures, panels and composite materials for houses and buildings, versatile household products (furniture, kitchen utensils, etc), vehicles for transportation (such as boats, bicycles, skateboards, and even ultra‐light airplanes), pulp and paper, fiber for textiles, medicinal and bio-‐chemical products (including bio‐plastics and bio‐fuels), charcoal for cooking and heating, and so much more. Bamboo serves the needs in the daily life of more than 1 billion of people, as no other plant on Earth. The global revenue from bamboo-related sales is currently estimated at $10 billion, and it is growing! Bamboo represents a unique group within the grass family with jointed stems. Some of the giant bamboos are the fastest-growing and most versatile plants on Earth. Shoots develop into stems (called culms) from an underground root system, the rhizome. During the growing season, they emerge and expand within 2‐3 months, reaching their final height in the very same growing season, some reaching 100 feet. There is no other plant on Earth with such a daily growth rate. Bamboo is a self-regenerating raw material with a continuous production of new shoots. It does not die when it is cut down; it replenishes itself. Ordinary trees have to be cultivated from seedlings, and need to grow for several decades to produce timber. The trees are cut and then new trees have to be planted again as seedlings to create a new forest. Bamboo grows into a forest by reproducing itself and continuously provides timber. It is a surprising resource for the future ; one that contributes to global economic growth as a green alternative to traditional timber. The recent trend in ‘branding’ bamboo as a green material is based on the belief that bamboo holds the promise of a sustainable, cost effective, and ecologically benign alternative to the widespread clear-cutting of old growth forests and dwindling timber resources. Because of the merits of bamboo growing fast and its subsequent re-growth after cutting, it is indeed a renewable resource. And much like a giant lung, living forests breathe. It has been estimated that bamboo’s leafy canopy possibly releases 25 percent more oxygen than a comparable cluster of hardwood trees, especially since the bamboo re-grows and reproduces a canopy many times in its lifespan. In the renewing process, the bamboo plant grabs carbon dioxide from the air and holds it within its culm (stem) and root system where, in nature, it is not released until the soil in which the plant decomposes is cultivated. It is becoming generally accepted that one major cause of climate change is the rising levels of gasses in the earth’s atmosphere, primarily serious is that of rising levels of carbon dioxide. Products made from bamboo take that carbon out of circulation. Bamboo products which are sustainably harvested and properly manufactured can last for many generations, keeping carbon locked up over the life of the products and helping to offset carbon usage that occurs in the product shipping distances to the end-market. Industrial bamboo products derived using best-practice technology,(even when used in the United States) can be labeled “CO2 neutral or better”. The high annual yield of bamboo, in combination with its durable root structure which enables growth in difficult habitats such as marginal lands and eroded slopes, is one of the most promising solutions in the required shift towards renewable materials. Due to its amazing mechanical properties (hardness, dimensional stability, etc. ) and appealing looks, industrial bamboo products compete with A-quality hardwoods. In terms of annual yield as well as eco-costs and carbon footprint, industrial bamboo products score well compared to FSC hardwood (van der Lugt et al. 2009). Bamboo is better because it is a eco‐friendly, highly renewable resource. Sustainably managed bamboo plantations can stimulate social and economic development, and serve important ecological and biological functions to improve Planet Earth. worldbamboo.net See article by John Roach about EARTH DAY: for National Geographic PUBLISHED APRIL 21, 2014 More than a billion people around the world will celebrate Earth Day on April 22, 2014—the 44th anniversary of the annual day of action. Earth Day began in 1970, when 20 million people across the United States—that’s one in ten—rallied for increased protection of the environment. “It was really an eye-opening experience for me,” Gina McCarthy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who was a self-described self-centered teenager during the first Earth Day rallies, told National Geographic. (See pictures: “The First Earth Day—Bell-Bottoms and Gas Masks.“) ”Not only were people trying to influence decisions on the Vietnam War,” she recalled, “but they were beginning to really focus attention on issues like air pollution, the contamination they were seeing in the land, and the need for federal action.” At the time, she said, the environment was in visible ruins—factories legally spewed black clouds of pollutants into the air and dumped toxic waste into streams. (Learn more about air pollution.) “I can remember the picture of the Cuyahoga River being on fire,” she said, referring to the Ohio waterway choked with debris, oil, sludge, industrial wastes, and sewage that spectacularly erupted in flames on June 22, 1969, and caught the nation’s attention. Although members of the public were increasingly incensed at the lack of legal and regulatory mechanisms to thwart environmental pollution, green issues were absent from the U.S. political agenda. First Earth Day “Took Off Like Gangbusters” The environment’s low profile frustrated U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, whose campaigns to protect it during the 1960s had fallen flat. In 1969 Nelson hit on the idea of an environmental protest modeled after anti-Vietnam War teach-ins. “It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country,” Nelson recounted in an essay shortly before he died in July 2005 at 89. “The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air—and they did so with spectacular exuberance.” (Related: “Earth Day Pictures: 20 Stunning Shots of Earth From Space.”) Nelson recruited activist Denis Hayes to organize the April 22, 1970, teach-in, which today is sometimes credited with launching the modern environmental movement. By the end of 1970, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had been established, and efforts to improve air and water quality were gaining political traction. “It was truly amazing what happened,” Kathleen Rogers, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Earth Day Network, told National Geographic News in 2009. “Blocks just tumbled.” A photo of first graders with the University of Memphis Campus School planting watermelon seeds for Earth Day 2014. First graders at the University of Memphis Campus School in Tennessee planted watermelon seeds to celebrate Earth Day. PHOTOGRAPH BY WILLIAM DESHAZER/THE COMMERICAL APPEAL/ASSOCIATED PRESS Earth Day Evolves Since the first Earth Day, environmentalism has moved from a fringe issue to a mainstream concern, Amy Cassara told National Geographic News in 2010, when she was a senior associate at the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. “As many as 80 percent of Americans describe themselves as environmentalists,” Cassara said. Environmental problems today, however, are less immediate than dirty air, toxic water, and a hole in the ozone layer, she said. For example, the effects of global climate change are largely abstract and difficult to explain “without coming off as a doomsday prognosticator.” (See pictures of Earth Day stunts.) “As we become more industrialized and our supply chains become less transparent,” she added, “it can be more difficult to understand the environmental consequences of our actions.” McCarthy is in a new battle to protect Americans from modern environmental threats such as global climate change, which she called “one of the most significant, if not the most significant, public health issue of our time.” (See a map of global warming effects.) As EPA chief, she is charged with implementing large portions of President Barack Obama’s controversial climate action plan, such as carbon pollution standards for new and existing power plants, which the agency says will help protect millions of Americans from the dangers of a warming planet. Grassroots Power People in the modern-day environmental movement, McCarthy noted, should remember the power of the grassroots activism that spurred the first Earth Day in 1970. “It wasn’t so much about demanding national action,” she said. “It was about demanding that individuals get engaged, [and] that would then push national action.” (See your pictures of Earth.) McCarthy is especially keen to hear more voices from minority and low-income communities, which are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. “This is an issue where we need everybody to speak up,” she said. Though huge problems remain, McCarthy noted, the impact of that first Earth Day has been profound. Since then, the nation’s air and water have become dramatically cleaner, and lead has disappeared from gasoline—while the economy has more than doubled in size. “Really, it all began with Earth Day,” she said, “and the ability to have a grassroots movement that demanded that we keep people safe while we continue to grow the economy.” worldbambooday.org/
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:42:37 +0000
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