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Introduction
Whilst bamboo grows best in tropical climates, there are a few varieties of bamboo which are suitable to the UK and European climates. It follows that it is theoretically possible to cultivate and harvest bamboo in the UK and Europe and transform it into bamboo toilet paper.
However, the real question is whether it is practical and affordable to do so. Lets dive deeper into that question below.
- Growing bamboo for toilet paper production
The largest bamboo toilet paper producing countries in the world are unsurprisingly those which have the highest levels of natural bamboo growth. Bamboo’s rapid growth requires a huge amount of both rain and sunshine, and thus most varieties flourish in tropical environments in Asia and Africa.
Extreme and lingering cold weather, often found in Northern Europe and the UK, can stunt the growth of many bamboo varieties, leaving a limited number of cold resistant varieties able to survive.
Without a significant amount of capital investment into facilities which mimic tropical climates, suitable for the harvesting of bamboo, it is unlikely that countries in Europe and the UK can ever produce bamboo toilet paper on a macro scale
- How about importing raw bamboo
Of the few factories in Europe producing bamboo toilet paper, all import either the raw bamboo culms or “mother rolls” from China, before making the potentially misleading claim that their bamboo toilet paper products were “produced in Europe”.
Whilst it is preferable to Bamboo Soft and other companies in the bamboo toilet paper industry to see European factories produce bamboo toilet paper rather than normal toilet paper, it remains our belief that it is more efficient to simply import bamboo toilet paper rather than its raw material counterpart.
If factories in Europe are concerned about working conditions of factories in China, which have significantly improved in the past two decades, setting up their own factory in China may be a solution. They would have complete control over production, management of labour and resources. Otherwise, the significant benefits of bamboo toilet paper over normal toilet paper currently outweigh the negative effects of shipping it from China to Europe and the UK
- Affordability
There is a key component often missed by sustainability advocates and those vigorously promoting bamboo toilet paper and eco friendly products more generally: to become popular in the mainstream consumer market, they need to be affordable.
What followed COVID-19 in the UK and much of the world was an economic downturn and cost of living crisis where consumers often struggled to even make ends meet. To expect these consumers to prioritise expensive eco friendly alternatives to plastic or high carbon emitting products in such an economic environment is potentially naïve and ill advised.
With a strong currency and high labour and energy costs, manufacturing anything in the UK is extremely expensive, and this has driven the continued decline in UK manufacturing in the past fifty years. In this sense, a key benefit of maintaining bamboo toilet paper production in countries like China is the ability to import it and subsequently sell it at prices competitive to normal toilet paper. Once bamboo toilet paper has entered the mainstream, large companies will be willing to invest the necessary capital to produce it in the UK and Europe. To get into the mainstream in the first place however, it must first be affordable.
- Opportunity cost
Another issue that needs to be discussed is the opportunity cost of growing and harvesting bamboo in the UK and Europe. Bamboo grows in abundance in places like China and India, and these countries can harvest bamboo without an impact on the growth of other plants. There is also no internal debate within these countries about the best use of the land bamboo grows and whether this can be better utilised for building houses or raising livestock
On the other hand however, the land, resources and capital required to grow bamboo in the UK and Europe would raise a fierce debate about whether such land and resources could be better utilised in other areas.
Using the UK as an example, the UK government has pledged to plant 8,400 sqkm of woodland by 2050, including the building of 300,000 homes per year and protecting 400,000 hectares of land for biodiversity by 2030. Trying to add a plant like bamboo to the mix, despite its natural tendency to prefer warmer climates, would not go down well
- Regulation
A final issue to discuss is that of regulation. In the UK, bamboo is not classed as an invasive species in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, however many legal firms in the UK have are aware of the potential of bamboo to encroach residential properties, and fear it may be classed as an invasive species in the future.
This negative sentiment in the UK contrasts starkly to that in China, where in October 2023, four Chinese government agencies announced a three year plan to replace bamboo as an eco friendly substitute to plastic.
Until the UK and Europe promote bamboo through regulation as an eco friendly source material for a range of products rather than a useless and potentially invasive species, China will continue to dominate the market in bamboo toilet production, and those wishing to use bamboo toilet paper in the UK will have to import it.