Bamboo Utilization as a Sustainable Building Material: Bamboo in Buildings

Introduction

Building materials, innovations, and practices have advanced throughout the ages. The investigation and progress in building improvement began with the usage of regular materials like stone, soil, leaves, natural lumber, etc. A couple of issues related to the strength of the regular materials like soil, leaves, wood, etc., lead to the investigation and development of sustainable structural materials (Reddy, 2004). While blocks and bricks burning were the earliest technologies used for thermal energy to produce durable building materials, metal, lime, and lime-based items; on the other hand, they represent one of the significant manufactured energy-consuming materials used for building construction (Venkatarama Reddy, 2009). It was demonstrated that between 2% and 38% of energy is consumed by conventional building materials (Bribián, Capilla, & Usón, 2011), including steel, solid, aluminum, and glass, which are high energy content materials, paving the way for the search for an alternative renewable and sustainable building material. Subsequently, the innovation of natural inorganic binders like pozzolanic materials has given rise to lime-pozzolana (LP) cement, resulting in the discovery of building material known as Portland cement. Portland cement and steel brought progressive changes in the building industry since the early part of the 20^th century, followed by plastics and plastic products that later entered the building industry (Cao et al., 2017).

Buildings have an instantaneous impact on the surroundings, ranging from the use of raw substances in the course of construction, renovation, and maintenance to the emission of harmful materials at some stage in the building’s lifestyle cycle (Hu, Cabeza, & Yan, 2020; Nejat, Jomehzadeh, Taheri, Gohari, & Majid, 2015; Syla, 2019). To address global warming, environmental economics, and sustainable improvement have emerged as imperative concerns to the global world. Many environmental discussions have focused on the concept of ecologically sustainable development (ESD) which is designed based on the building development viewpoint to address the green use of resources to satisfy the requirements and desires of present and future generations. The building and the environment are undistinguishably connected. Since buildings sway on the environment during their life cycle, the selection of materials utilized in the building will affect the general building performance just as the environment. It became inevitable that the building has found itself at the center of issues regarding environmental effect due to materials used in their construction. The impact of building on the environment is linked not only with the indoor air pollution but also on the global climate and ozone depletion. It then requires that incorporating sustainable building materials into the design of the building will have a significant impact on increasing the life span of buildings as well as reducing the carbon emission during the building life cycle. Chen et al. (Chen, Okudan, & Riley, 2010) reported that appropriate sustainable material selection will help in attaining the objective of sustainable development in the building industry. Because of the pattern of development from zero energy material to more current materials for the building development, it became evident that more energy is spent on building development. Besides, a portion of the advanced building materials is moved over significant distances before they are utilized in building development. Attributable to the worldwide requirement for carbon emission reduction and hence the pressure to comply with carbon neutral targets, is required that materials that are recyclable, natural, sustainable, and environmentally friendly should be used for the construction of buildings.