By Robin Van Loon | Executive Director
Bamboo is a grass that can grow 50 meters tall. It's the source of fibers used to make paper and clothing, and a sturdy "timber" familiar in the tropics and increasingly throughout the world.
And it's fast. Many species of bamboo grow faster than trees. And many species sequester more carbon dioxide than trees, a fact that has made bamboo attractive for possible carbon capture credit systems.
It works like this: the growing plant takes in CO2 as part of photosynthesis, incorporating much of that carbon into its body as biomass. For as long as the plant resists decomposition, this carbon is captured, sequestered, sunk. If the thing rots, much of the carbon offgases as CO2 and methane. So for bamboo to be effective as a carbon capture system, the bamboo must be preserved, as is the case with bamboo-as-timber in construction.
The other way you can lock the carbon in is by making bamboo charcoal.
Counter-intuitive as it appears at first glance, charring bamboo is in fact pyrolysis instead of combustion and releases few emissions. And the carbon captured in charcoal exists in a much more stable form -- charcoal can last for hundreds or even thousands of years without re-releasing its carbon.
Bamboo charcoal is like pulling carbon out of the atmosphere by some magic trick and placing it in stable organic canisters that can safely be buried -- and in fact provide great benefits in the soil.
Our bamboo plantings are over a year old now but still need more time before they can start yielding sustainable harvests. Thanks to your support, we're approaching the execution phase in which we'll demonstrate bamboo bio-char's value and begin to share it.
Thanks so much for your interest and support!
By Robin Van Loon | Executive Director
By Robin Van Loon | Executive Director
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