[uglycoyote]

This was interesting in light of an interview I was just listening to yesterday, a CBC podcast [1] talking about the benefits of mass timber (glued wood) for large highrise building construction.

There were two guests on, both sounded like environmentalists, with the first one (Michael Green) saying that mass timber was

"currently the best tool we have to address climate impact and in the building materials for a large building"

while the second guest (John Talberth) was arguing:

"The idea that we can cut down our forests and turn them into two by fours and build our way to a stable climate is absurd, and it's just another one of these false narratives of big timber corporations are using to get us to buy more of their product and continue to subsidise their record profits",

and Talberth advocated Bamboo, mentioning it multiple times as an alternative. It kind of went back and forth a bit with Mr Green saying

"Bamboo, for instance, is not structurally a material that can actually satisfy the demand of three billion people that need a new home because it doesn't build large buildings"

and Mr Talberth saying

"Believe it or not, bamboo can actually be put together in the structurally with high structural integrity beams to make taller buildings"

It kind of left me wondering who was right... though Mr Green (an architect) sounded like someone with actual experience making buildings, where as the Mr Talberth (an economist) sounded like he might have been doing a bit of ill-informed wishful thinking about Bamboo.

Seeing the process here gave me a bit more perspective on the discussion. Given the labour involved and the fact that you are working with 20mm x 5mm cross-sections of bamboo, I can see how it would be extremely expensive to build a large building out of bamboo, and the $300 euro price tag on a sheet of plywood at the bottom of the page added more confirmation that it's not going to be a practical replacement for large-scale building.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-oct-20-2...

[gizmo686]

We are not cutting down forests to make buildings. We get plenty of lumber to do that from sustainable tree farms. We are cutting down forests to get land (mostly to use for non-tree agriculture)

[hcurtiss]

John Talberth runs the Center for Sustainable Economy, an environmental advocacy organization in Portland, Oregon. He is an old general from the PNW "timber wars" of the 1990s, directly involved in pursuing the spotted owl injunctions. He has long been opposed to intensive management of native conifer forests. It's amusing to me to hear him advocating for harvest in somebody else's back yard. I suppose that's been the subtext the entire time, with so much harvest volume having migrated to the US southeast following the spotted owl injunctions.

[giarc]

At the bottom of the OP link is the price for a 4x8' sheet of bamboo plywood. It's listed for 295 euroos or $342USD. I'm not sure there is a 'regular' wood sheet that is even close to that cost. It's truly a specialized product and unless there are more economical bamboo sheet goods, no one would ever build with this.

[kabes]

I started searching for bamboo exterior sidings because of this post and it seems to be about the same price like hardwood sidings. Bit cheaper than padauk.

[clomond]

When thinking about “carbon stores” - it is significantly more preferable to turn managed forests into manufactured wood products for buildings and furniture (where the CO2 gets functionally stored and then possibly tossed in a landfill far in the future) to turning those forests into wood pellets to be burned as biomass.

Managed forestry has the ability to, relatively trivially and particularly when compared to other “carbon sequestration alternatives” lock in decent magnitudes of carbon as we figure out our energy system.

Particularly helps when comparing to other building material options (bricks, concrete, steel all very energy intensive and not decarbonized yet).