Bamboo is an interesting "crop" with many uses. Grow your own home, therapeutic bamboo salts from Korea, the world’s fastest growing plant (?), etc. It looks like they're going to grow it in Chicago of all places!
Ken http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bamboo26.html Bamboo farms could help soak up urban pollution January 26, 2004 BY GARY WISBY Environment Reporter Advertisement A novel plan to grow bamboo on polluted lots in Chicago known as brownfields is a winner in a new sustainable design competition. This beats the usual "dig and haul" method that deposits the contaminated soil in a landfill. Instead, the bamboo absorbs pollutants and converts them into nutrients. "Urban Bamboo Farms" is the idea of three master's degree candidates in urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago -- Daniel Butt, Kevin Anderson and Abraham Madrigal. Their brainchild was one of three prize winners at last week's Chicago Sustainable Design Initiative. It also was the "audience choice" of 250 local designers, architects, policy makers and nonprofit leaders. Butt and Madrigal visited city-sponsored affordable "green" homes and discovered they featured bamboo flooring. It's the equivalent of expensive oak. The trio's research found two kinds of bamboo plants, Moso and Madake, that can survive 15-below-zero winters. Seeds and small plants are available from growers in Ohio and on the West Coast. "We can use the seed from our initial crop to increase the supply and achieve economies of scale," Butt said. Up to 8 feet tall and green, bamboo farms could change the look of Chicago's vacant lots. "Planted in between houses, it would serve as a windbreak, reducing energy costs," Butt said. "It's like planting trees around a home." Local low-income people could be hired to plant and maintain the crop. More jobs would be created by factories that would produce flooring, furniture, musical instruments -- anything ordinarily made of wood. Used as a renewable building material for centuries in Asia, some types of bamboo have a greater tensile strength than steel. Bamboo reaches maturity in three to five years, compared with the 30 to 50 years needed by hardwoods. The plant reduces runoff rates and pollutants in the water table, and is a better carbon sink than most trees. So it helps improve air and water quality. "It also saves deforestation in other parts of the world and emissions from transporting wood to Chicago," Butt said. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?list=biofuel Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
