It can be as small as drinking water with a bamboo straw, eating with a bamboo fiber lunch box and bamboo chopsticks and spoons, and as large as various furniture and building materials...... In two or three years, such use cases may be everywhere. Since November 2022, when the Chinese government and INBAR jointly launched the initiative, "bamboo instead of plastic" has continued to usher in new ignition points in the industry.
Recently, the Global Action Plan (2023-2030) was officially released at the first International Symposium on Replacing Plastics with Bamboo, which clarified six major action goals and put forward a total of 23 specific actions from policy, scientific research, innovation, marketing to publicity and cooperation. Previously, the National Development and Reform Commission, together with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Finance, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration and other departments, issued the "Three-year Action Plan for Accelerating the Development of "Bamboo instead of Plastic" (hereinafter referred to as the "Action Plan"), proposing that by 2025, the "Bamboo instead of Plastic" industrial system will be initially established. Compared with 2022, the comprehensive added value of the main products of "bamboo instead of plastic" will increase by more than 20%, and the comprehensive utilization rate of bamboo will increase by 20 percentage points.
Why should we replace plastic with bamboo? How far is it from "replacing plastic with bamboo"? How can small bamboo "grow" into a big industry in the field of plastic substitution? As a big country in the bamboo industry, how China can make better use of bamboo resources is the key to whether or not it can benefit from the 100 billion market.
This "bamboo" means good
"Bamboo instead of plastic", as the name suggests, is a product that was originally made of plastic, but now it is made of bamboo. It is possible to extract the main components of bamboo and chemically turn it into another industrial material. Some are distinguishable with the naked eye, such as plastic spoons and bamboo spoons, while others are barely visible to the naked eye, such as polyester and bamboo.
"Replacing plastic with bamboo" has only one purpose: to reduce the use of plastic products and reduce environmental pollution. As white pollution has increasingly become a prominent threat to the global environment, it has become an urgent issue to find more suitable alternative materials for plastics.
So, why choose bamboo?
As a member of biodegradable materials, bamboo has outstanding carbon sequestration ability and fast growth rate, making it an ideal green and sustainable material. Experts estimate that if 100 million tonnes of bamboo were used to replace PVC products globally every year, it is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 600 million tonnes.
According to Wang Ge, a researcher at INBAR, China is rich in bamboo resources, with a total of 857 species of bamboo plants, and a bamboo forest area of 7,562,700 hectares in 2021, concentrated in 16 provinces including Fujian, Jiangxi and Zhejiang.
"Bamboo has high strength, good toughness, high hardness and good plasticity, and is an excellent raw material for processing and manufacturing structural materials, plates, furniture, paper and other products, and bamboo shoots, bamboo fibers, etc. can be developed and utilized. Wang Ge said, "At present, there are nearly 10,000 kinds of bamboo products, which are widely used in more than a dozen fields such as construction, transportation, water conservancy, textiles, and daily household furnishings. ”
"Promoting 'replacing plastic with bamboo' can reduce the generation of plastic waste at the source, which is not only an effective way to strengthen the whole chain of plastic pollution control in China, but also provides a solution for global plastic pollution control. Niu Bo, deputy director of the Department of Environmental Resources of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at the International Symposium on Replacing Plastics with Bamboo that it is of great significance to promote the development of "Bamboo instead of Plastics", which can truly transform ecological advantages into economic advantages.
The bamboo industry has a broad space for development, and the potential of "bamboo instead of plastic" products is huge. Since last year, the Chinese government and INBAR jointly launched the "Bamboo instead of Plastic" initiative, and this nature-based plastic reduction solution has received increasing attention. According to the data, there are more than 10,000 bamboo processing enterprises in China, and the output value of the bamboo industry has increased from 82 billion yuan in 2010 to 415.3 billion yuan in 2022, with an average annual growth rate of more than 30%.
Relying on the resource endowment of bamboo resources, many places continue to transform it into industrial development momentum. In Jiangxi, the service life of fully degradable recombinant bamboo flooring is as long as 25 years, in Jiangsu, a bamboo lattice water-spraying filler is used in the cooling towers of nearly 1,000 thermal power plants, and in Zhejiang, the bamboo winding composite pipe developed by a company has been industrialized in the field of water supply and drainage engineering...... From daily necessities to industrial production, and then to building materials, the use scenarios of "bamboo instead of plastic" products cover many fields from civil to industrial.
How far is "bamboo instead of plastic" from us?
There is no doubt that "replacing plastic with bamboo" has a competitive advantage in reducing plastic pollution, but in order to achieve accelerated industrial development, it is still necessary to solve a series of problems such as harvesting costs, technical equipment, and market acceptance.
Most of the bamboo grows in the mountains, and reducing the cost of harvesting is a top priority. Taking Jiangxi as an example, the bamboo forest area in Jiangxi Province is 17.65 million mu, but due to the lack of infrastructure such as roads and mining machinery in Zhushan, more than 35% of the bamboo forest has never been developed. The labor cost of cutting, loading, and transportation of a ton of moso bamboo is nearly 450 yuan, while the average market price is less than 600 yuan. The high cost of cutting leads to extensive and inefficient management, and it is difficult to mobilize the enthusiasm of employees.
In this regard, some bamboo producing areas have taken the lead in making changes, and actively implemented intensive, large-scale, mechanized management and logging, so that bamboo forests can achieve sustainable management. For example, Nanping, Fujian Province, has introduced policies according to local conditions to encourage the large-scale and intensive development of Zhushan operations. The local Songxi County implemented a modern bamboo industry project, laying tracks on the bamboo mountain, and solving the problem of dozens of bamboo farmers along the line transporting fertilizer up the mountain and sending bamboo shoots down the mountain.
On the other hand, to develop the bamboo industry, we must do a good job in bamboo processing. At present, the scale efficiency of the bamboo industry is poor, mainly due to the limited technical equipment, that is, the low level of automation of the processing of major bamboo products. According to reports, many production workshops still need a lot of manual operation, and the production line cannot realize automatic assembly line production.
In this regard, Zhejiang Anji has achieved outstanding results. Anji is not only a bamboo production area, but also gathers about half of the country's bamboo machinery and accessories manufacturing enterprises, forming a relatively complete bamboo machinery industry chain, with more than 3,000 direct practitioners. On this basis, the total output value of the bamboo industry in Anji County in 2022 will be nearly 16.6 billion yuan, achieving more than 5% of the total output value of the bamboo industry in the country with less than 1% of the country's bamboo forest area.
Behind this is financial support. Since 2022, Anji has introduced a number of local policies of "replacing plastic with bamboo", with 250 million yuan of government investment to support the bamboo industry every year, and a total of 50 million yuan of financial funds to support scientific and technological innovation in the bamboo industry for five consecutive years from 2023.
Finally, there is market acceptance. It has to be said that the cost of "bamboo instead of plastic" products is high, and consumers still tend to choose plastic products with lower prices. How to realize the transformation from "cheap, good to use" to "good to use and more environmentally friendly", and fully transform the concept of green environmental protection into practical actions, will also affect the in-depth development of the bamboo products consumer market.
Nanping City, Fujian Province, bamboo forest area of more than 50,000 acres of townships and towns have 48, accounting for 41.74% of the city's 115 townships, a few days ago, Nanping City issued the "Nanping City to promote the implementation plan for the construction of a demonstration city of "bamboo instead of plastic" (trial), clear that the city's party and government organs, state-owned enterprises and institutions fully apply the "bamboo instead of plastic", "bamboo instead of wood" and "bamboo instead of steel" products, accommodation, catering, supermarkets and other service areas and key industries "bamboo instead of plastic" product use rate has increased significantly.
Take multiple measures to promote the development of the bamboo industry
At present, "bamboo instead of plastic" is still an emerging industry, in China's industrial scale is still small, low output, high cost, technology and equipment are relatively backward. According to the bamboo industry development plan, the total output value of China's bamboo industry will exceed 1 trillion yuan by 2035.
In this regard, the "Action Plan" proposes that in the next three years, 7 actions will be carried out, including scientific and technological innovation and promotion actions, industrial ecological cultivation actions, production and marketing docking promotion actions, key scene substitution actions, characteristic area leading actions, social publicity and guidance actions, and international exchange and cooperation actions.
"The action of scientific and technological innovation promotion and the cultivation of industrial ecology are the most critical. Zhang Xiaobing, co-founder of the smart agriculture platform, believes that scientific and technological innovation can improve the quality and product design of bamboo products, so that bamboo products are more in line with market demand, and the industrial ecological cultivation action can promote the standardization, branding and scientific development of the bamboo industry, providing basic conditions for promoting the innovation and development of related enterprises.
Driven by the "dual carbon" goal, plastic substitution has become a major trend in recent years. The "Opinions on Further Strengthening the Control of Plastic Pollution" issued in January 2020 proposes that by 2025, the management system for the production, circulation, consumption, recycling and disposal of plastic products will be improved, and the use of non-degradable plastics will be gradually banned and restricted.
At the same time, "bamboo instead of plastic" began to be more and more optimistic. It is understood that the carbon sequestration capacity of bamboo forests far exceeds that of ordinary forests, which is 1.46 times that of fir trees and 1.33 times that of tropical rainforests, and China's bamboo forests can reduce carbon and sequester 302 million tons of carbon every year.
According to the "Action Plan", policy support will continue to be increased, including the development, production and application of "bamboo instead of plastic" products as an encouraged project included in the "Industrial Structure Adjustment Guidance Catalogue"; local governments can include the cultivation of qualified bamboo forests in the scope of central financial afforestation and forest quality improvement policy support; improve the financial service mechanism, guide financial institutions to develop financial products in line with the characteristics of the "bamboo instead of plastic" industry; Products are included in the scope of government procurement support, increase government procurement, and encourage public institutions to actively purchase related "bamboo instead of plastic" products.
Zhang Wei, director of the Department of Ecological Protection and Restoration of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, said that he hoped to take the "bamboo instead of plastic" initiative as an opportunity to take multiple measures to effectively improve the level of scientific and technological innovation and scientific research, increase market promotion, and promote the vigorous development of China's bamboo industry.