BAMBOO – A GREEN CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL FOR HOUSING TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC GROWTH

Any building that is designed, constructed and maintained for the health and well being of the occupants while minimizing the negative impact on the environment falls under the category of green building. Other factors like resource-efficient site design and development practices helps to reduce the environmental impacts and improve the energy performance of newly built house. Bamboo is a positive green option since it qualifies under many of the categories for eco-friendly building material viz low energy consumption, sustainability, fast growing, environmental friendly, high strength to weight ratio and reduction to soil erosion. Moreover bamboo based housing system requires lower operating costs and increases thermal comfort. They have enhanced durability and needs less maintenance. Thus bamboo and bamboo composites have immense potential to serve as a green building material in innovative and aesthetic housing. Armed with a wide gamut of advantages, bamboo composites have a key role to play in the growing market in India. The developmental efforts for finding newer composites for existing and novel applications are an area of top priority. Considerable expertise exists in India in the technological institution and a few manufacturing industries, the usage of composites in all these years has been limited to multiple commercial application and potential for export have also not been tapped even in a limited way. In view of the crucial need for developing indigenous capability in composite technology, institutes like IPIRTI has taken a challenge towards developing bamboo and bamboo composite based houses for dwellings and commercial purposes.