An eco-friendly alternative to plastic is coming? This material is extremely plastic, the Chinese have used it for thousands of years, cheap and environmentally friendly, renewable, can it really replace plastic?
"White pollution" plastic, non-degradable and toxic, is a great damage to the whole earth, but it is indeed the most popular industrial product, cheap, convenient and easy to use, if you want human beings to completely eliminate plastic, it is basically an impossible thing.
How widespread is plastic? Taking 2016 data as an example, the use of plastic bags for express packaging alone reached 14.7 billion.
At that time, the weight of plastic bags and disposable plastic packaging in Beijing reached 436,000 tons, and an average of 1,200 tons of plastic waste was generated every day.
Because of the staggering amount of plastic used and the fact that plastic is not degradable, the call to replace plastic with other materials has been growing over the years.
Today, there is a new addition to the plastic material – bamboo.
Three-year action plan
On November 2, the National Development and Reform Commission, together with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Forestry and Grassland Bureau and other departments, formulated and issued an action plan for "replacing plastic with bamboo".
The action plan proposes to establish an industrial system that has taken shape in two to three years. The new system should ensure quality, scale, variety and comprehensive benefits.
In particular, it is necessary to further increase the market share of products, and increase the added value and comprehensive utilization rate of products by more than 20%.
Obviously, in terms of controlling the "white pollution" dominated by plastics, degradable bamboo, as a biomass material, will have more room for development in the future.
Paper cups made from bamboo and sugar cane degrade quickly
At present, the industry is not large as an emerging industry, the number of products is low, and the production cost is relatively high due to backward technology. It is precisely because of these deficiencies that the State has formulated relevant action plans.
Specifically, the next step is to innovate technology, related scientific research will be carried out, and some national key laboratories will be built, mainly to break through technical bottlenecks, and carry out core research from the cultivation, planting, felling, processing, transportation and other aspects of bamboo.
Only when technology progresses, the relevant industrial ecology will be more perfect. In terms of industrial scale, the state encourages family forest farms, cooperative economic cooperatives and other business entities, and the upstream and downstream of the industry should form a perfect chain.
From the perspective of the sales level, a series of dialogue and exchange platforms will be built at the national level in the future in order to publicize and guide the development of the industrial scale of bamboo instead of plastic to a deeper field.
Especially in some types of products that replace plastics, the next step will be to launch a key product directory to provide a reference for the specific production of enterprises.
In addition, the whole society will also actively guide and publicize, advocate green production and consumption patterns, and let the public further reduce their dependence on plastic products, especially disposable plastic products, through relevant explanations and promotions.
From the perspective of the comprehensive action plan, the state has not only put forward directions and goals, but also established a set of effective action measures. Technology should be innovated, products should be replaced and upgraded, and the concept of consumption should be changed.
In the development of the industry, policy support will be gradually strengthened in the next three years, especially after the establishment of the standard certification system in regulations, a new industrial scale will be established.
With the help of a series of national improvement measures, this will be a new industry that is rising in the east.
The advantages of replacing plastic with bamboo
Before this alternative was formally proposed, humanity's dependence on plastic products, and the resulting environmental pollution problem, had reached a point of no return.
A total of 9.2 billion tons of plastic products have been produced by countries all over the world since the fifties of the last century. Of this, 7 billion tonnes are plastic waste, and less than 10% of it can be recycled and reused.
The reversal of plastic has forced human beings to take measures. It is in this context that the advantages of bamboo come to the fore.
Among the biodegradable materials that replace plastics, bamboo has unique growth advantages. Growing 1.2 meters per day, bamboo is the fastest-growing plant and takes only two to three months to grow from juvenile to full-growth.
On the whole, the yield of bamboo is still very high, and the distribution area is also very wide. After forestation, the global annual production of bamboo can reach and exceed 600 million tons.
In addition, it is renewable and grows fast, and if it is used on a large scale, the yield is guaranteed.
After all, after the completion of industrialization, many of the various products in life are made of plastic. Once plastic is banned in the future, there is a renewable material that can be supplied in quantity, and it seems that bamboo will be able to do so at the moment.
In addition to the growth and yield advantages, the performance advantages of bamboo are also irreplaceable. In pre-industrial agrarian societies, bamboo was originally an important tool product in human life. Because of its good toughness, high hardness and strong plasticity, it can have a wide range of applications.
Nowadays, with the rise of bamboo instead of plastic, traditional bamboo products can be strengthened and developed, and new bamboo products, driven by technological research, can also open up larger application fields in the future.
Up to now, more than 10,000 kinds of products using bamboo as raw materials have been developed in China, involving many aspects of life such as clothing, food, housing and transportation. There is such a momentum of development, thanks to the performance advantages of bamboo itself.
For example, in recent years, Zhejiang has developed and produced a winding pipe made of bamboo. This kind of pipe can replace the plastic pipe products currently used in various industries. Compared with the non-degradability of plastic, bamboo pipes can be biodegradable and the material can be recycled.
As of last year, such pipes were already being used in some drainage projects, with similar pipes being laid over a distance of more than 300 kilometers.
In addition to making pipes, the number of packaging products made from bamboo is also increasing. Bamboo is inherently strong and could have been used to make materials such as box boards. With the development of new technologies, the use of materials in the future will be more extensive.
Therefore, from the type of product to its own performance, the master has a large number of natural advantages. In the future, with the help of relevant policies, making good use of these advantages is equivalent to broadening the field of bamboo products and making its use value greater.
After having a product, the next step to consider is the market potential and development space of bamboo products.
How much room for improvement
Taking Nanping in Fujian Province as an example, in recent years, through the development of various types of bamboo products, its products have not only sold well in China, but also promoted to overseas markets.
Nanping originally has abundant bamboo resources, and has the reputation of bamboo shoots in China, so the development of bamboo instead of plastic industry has a natural advantage.
In the past, it was originally a production place for chopsticks, toothpicks, tea trays, outdoor boards and other products, but with the opening of new business formats, the processing of local bamboo products has become more refined.
In terms of raw materials, the local bamboo forest in Nanping has reached more than 6.5 million acres, and the resources are sufficient to ensure the production of the enterprise, and there are 180 local bamboo-related enterprises, and the previous output value has exceeded 31 billion. And due to the early development of the industry, there is also the first listed bamboo product enterprise in the local area.
With the opening of the industrial form of replacing plastic with bamboo, in addition to the original production of bamboo products, the original plastic products have also begun to be produced. For example, plastic toothbrushes have become bamboo toothbrushes, and the original plastic straws have become straws made of bamboo.
In the past, plastic products were disposable, and bamboo products were also disposable, but compared with plastic, bamboo can be naturally degraded without any impact on the environment.
The current and future development trend of local enterprises in Nanping is to replace more plastic products with bamboo. Moreover, they started early, and now they have certain industrial advantages, and will have a greater first-mover advantage in the research and development of new technologies and alternative plastic products.
At present, Nanping's local bamboo products are exported to overseas, mainly for the markets of Western countries such as Europe and the United States.
To explore the improvement space and development potential of bamboo products, other major bamboo-producing provinces are also exploring their own paths.
In Chishui, Guizhou, where the scale of bamboo resources is sufficient, the main local exploration is to further strengthen the resource advantages, improve the yield, ensure the quality, and provide good services in transportation, which will help support the development of the downstream of the industrial chain.
In order to increase yields, Chishui has proposed measures to change crops and cut down at tending intervals. In addition, professional harvesting teams have also been formed and developed on a cross-village scale, which helps to improve the efficiency of felling and ensure the quality of bamboo. Moreover, large-scale professional harvesting can also reduce the subsequent transportation costs.
Hunan Taojiang is mainly focused on product development and production. A local company mainly produces pallets for logistics, which used to be wooden or plastic, but in Taojiang, a bamboo pallet was developed in 2022.
This kind of tray is not made from whole bamboo, but from the reproduction of bamboo fibers, and the production is made of bamboo scraps.
Huang Dai, the person in charge of the company, said that a certain proportion of plastic will be added to the bamboo tray when making, and the biggest feature of the product is that it is tough.
In the production process, whether it is bamboo or plastic, waste products are used. The recycled plastic waste is only 2,000 yuan per ton, and the recycling price of bamboo scraps is only 200 yuan a ton.
In the past, when producing plastic pallets, because there was no toughness of bamboo materials, only new plastics could be used instead of scrap, and the price of one ton would exceed 10,000 yuan. In comparison, after the addition of bamboo, the cost of production has decreased.
Based on the above situation, whether it is to increase the output of the upstream, or to accelerate the research and development of bamboo products in the midstream, or to further expand the market in the downstream, the advantages of the whole industrial chain of bamboo instead of plastic are quite obvious.
Foreign countries are also optimistic about this sunrise industry
World Environment Day is celebrated on 5 June every year, and this year the world's main focus is on solutions to plastic pollution. What the mainland advocates and promotes is the development of bamboo instead of plastic.
Some experts in the United States believe that replacing plastic with bamboo will have important practical significance in the future. WWF experts also believe that bamboo is a ready-made solution, and the next step is to make the industry into concrete measures.
In general, as in China, the many advantages of bamboo are also recognized abroad. Especially in industrial development, whether it is packaging or transportation, to construction or chemical industry, the substitutability of bamboo is being strengthened step by step.
Some professors at Tohoku University in Japan believe that once bamboo is widely used in the future, global carbon emissions will effectively decrease.
epilogue
It seems that whether it is disposable products produced with bamboo materials, such as paper cups and paper towels made of bamboo; Or durable products that replace plastic, such as flooring, furniture, building materials, and even bamboo bicycles, there is a lot of room for exploration and utilization of bamboo materials in the future.
At present, the mainland has put forward a specific plan for the development of the industrial system, and the next step is to promote the development of the entire industrial system in a more perfect direction.
In a word, only when the entire industrial chain has formed a huge scale can bamboo completely replace plastic.
Resources:
"How much space is there for products to sell well overseas and "replace plastic with bamboo", Economic Daily, January 12, 2023
"Experts from many countries praise the "bamboo instead of plastic" initiative to help the global fight against plastic pollution, Xinhua Daily Telegraph, June 6, 2023
"The mainland strives to initially establish an industrial system of "replacing plastic with bamboo" in 2025, Xinhuanet, November 2, 2023
How big is the potential of replacing plastic with bamboo? People's Daily, January 13, 2023