With the growing shortage of conventional building materials, bamboo building materials are seen as a substitute for steel, cement and wood, quietly pouring into the international market.

Due to its high hardness and strong wear resistance, bamboo products have become the green building materials to replace wood on the market today. Bamboo itself is a plant that can adapt to different climates and has a short growth cycle. It usually takes only 5 years to harvest, which greatly saves energy input. With the growing shortage of conventional building materials, bamboo building materials are seen as a substitute for steel, cement and wood, quietly pouring into the international market.

Bamboo grows all year round in fertile clay or sand in the tropics of about 28 to 50 degrees Celsius. Due to its structure and shape, there are about 1,100 to 1,500 species in the world, mainly in Asia, South America and Africa. Because bamboo has the characteristics of fast growth rate, light weight and low cost, the prospects in the field of building materials are very bright. Bamboo can be used not only to make traditional handicrafts, but also to make upholstery materials. Some special kinds of bamboo can also be used as supports (for example: scaffolding on the construction site).

Compared with wood, fresh wood products can produce many low-tech building materials, such as wood boards and wooden strips. Of course, it is also possible to produce building materials such as composite wood that require finishing. Bamboo products can also be used to produce these building materials. Bamboo products are used in the world much more than wood products. About one billion people in the world live in bamboo rooms. Especially in some developing countries, such as the Chinese Yi people, a nation that uses bamboo as a building material. Their bamboo buildings are made of bamboo, whether they are beams, ceilings, floors or walls. Of course, in the eyes of many people, bamboo building materials always represent poverty and backwardness. Most people prefer to live in modern apartments instead of living in the “mud shed” built by bamboo. This requires the innovation and development of bamboo building materials. Only the new type of bamboo building materials can get rid of the poor and backward building model in the past.

In recent years, bamboo has attracted attention in Western countries. As of 2005, many countries in Europe have tried to replace conventional building materials with bamboo building materials, such as the bamboo tower launched in Zurich in 1984 and the Rotterdam exhibition in the Netherlands in 1985, and the pedestrian bamboo bridge built in Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1999. An amphitheatre built in Berlin, Germany in 2000, a bamboo pavilion at the Hannover Fair, and a Rotterdam bamboo pavilion built in 2002. These have become the object of study by architects.

Researchers have studied the environmental load rate of bamboo building materials. The results show that the biggest obstacle to the promotion of bamboo products in Western countries is in the transportation sector. Since most of the bamboo raw materials need to be imported from Asia, South America or African countries, long-distance transportation causes damage to the environment. However, when it comes to building materials and environmental costs, the cost of using bamboo building materials is much lower than that of steel, cement, and wood building materials. Studies have shown that the use of bamboo building materials to improve the environment is 20 times that of other common building materials. This remarkable feature of bamboo building materials is first manifested in its natural structural characteristics. Its natural hollow structure makes the hardness and bearing capacity of bamboo much larger than other conventional building materials. In addition, the processing and utilization of bamboo is very simple. This determines the low energy consumption and high yield characteristics of the process.

Considering the entire life cycle of building materials from production to final disposal, bamboo products are not economical in terms of product value because their service life is shorter than conventional building materials such as reinforced concrete. Of course, if you only compare it with wood, bamboo products still have great value advantages. In addition, when calculating the value of the product, other economic expenses caused by the introduction of bamboo building materials were not added. For example, hiring experts to design, supervise construction, strengthen the quality control of bamboo producing areas, additional physical stress experiments, model construction and other costs are not calculated in the product value.