Recycling bamboo?

Does anyone know anything about recycling bamboo? How they do it, what it's made into? Do they compress it into a sort of chipboard like they do with normal wood?

Recycling bamboo?
All you need to do is follow a Panda around for a couple of days to find out.
Reply:It's not so much "recycling" as "using a growing crop."



Bamboo is, in botanical terms, more like a grass than anything else. The fact it gets 60ft tall and is as strong as many woods means you can use it in places where grass wouldn't do, though...



Bamboo can be bent while still alive, or within a couple of days of being cut, so can be used to make everything from furniture through fake Rolexes through to heavy construction. (Phylostachys Bambusoides has the common name of "timber bamboo" because it's usable where you'd have massive planks.)



One area where there is environmental concern is "bamboo flooring" - a lot of that is bamboo based, but coated with oil-based resins that are not only unsustainable but offgas nastily.



Bamboo has some big advantages - it can grow as far North as, well, where I am in the UK (we have a collection of about 25 bamboo species in a small suburban garden), and it grows much faster than hardwoods. Some species are edible (though not exactly tasty to a Western palette).



I'd LOVE to feel that, one day, we'll see DIY stuff of "make your own bamboo furniture" in the same we we currently do with woods.
Reply:different opinions from different countries



china - get a panda and you won't see much bamboos after a while



europe - they give the bamboos to the chinese workers to make them into chinese furniture which is pretty awesome



america - whats bamboo??



russia - export them to china



australia - bamboos gets eaten by kangaroo before they can grow up



new zealand - a good place for little creatures to hide in