So what’s the deal with bamboo? We get this question all the time (so does Google) and we wanted to put together a little blog post to answer all your questions!
WHY bamboo?
We do it for the trees, and trees sure have been in the news of late! Did you know bamboo is technically a grass? It’s the world’s fastest growing plant and some species can grow up to 3 feet in one day!
It takes years for most trees to reach that height — which is exactly why we use bamboo as a raw material for our Curated Companions. It’s one of our sustainable actions: with our bamboo-based collectibles, we can avoid cutting down forests that are centuries old.
So, how does it go from bamboo → body con Layering Pieces?
It’s actually a little like processing virgin wood — this is because bamboo fibers actually look and behave just like their virgin wood counterparts. While our manufacturing involves a lot of technical terms like tensile strength, yankee drums and brooming — here are the basic basics.
First, bamboo stalks are harvested and chopped into chips before pulping begins.
The bamboo chips are then treated in a digester for multiple hours. In this process, it is pulverized and cooked to break down and isolate the fibers. While some processes rely on hazardous chemicals to break down their raw materials, ours converts the fabric base using a less intensive thermo-chemical process. AND the resulting waste is upcycled to a paper mill to make packaging and low grade paper.
After the bamboo pulp is thoroughly treated, the manufacturer can start making fabric from the fibers. The fibers are cooked and whitened using a mix of hydrogen peroxide and elemental free chlorine. It’s baled for easy transportation and trucked to a nearby converter.
Once we’ve got the basis for bamboo/rayon fabric, it’s dried and cut onto the “mother roll”. After rounds and rounds (and rounds) of quality inspection, we combine the mother roll with nylon and spandex— which is how we get our amazingly soft and stretchy fabric.
Want to help reduce deforestation and give our bamboo-based Curated Companion Layers a try? Order with your Editor, or online anytime right here at Storyline Collection.com.
