Bamboo is a wonderful creation of nature. Long, slender, flexible; over and above strong. Human being used it from time immemorial for countless purposes. For construction of houses, making bridges, baskets, artefacts, musical instruments, containers, weapons and painting brushes. The list is almost endless. Truly it is a miracle plant. The magic of the bamboo lies in its strong fibers. Modern day carbon fiber reinforced structural material are imitation of the miraculous bamboo.

Did you notice that of all uses of bamboo, I have not mentioned bamboo fiber and fabric which is in the headline. I wanted to single out bamboo fiber out of all. Fiber from plants like jute, hemp, flax are produced quite easily by biological degradation and mechanical action. Bamboo fiber is deeply embedded in the woody body of the bamboo and the fiber obtained from it is relatively short and coarse. It does not have much of use as garment material.

Surprisingly for quite time I was encountering many advertisements in social media about bamboo fabrics. Very nice ads with plenty of superlative words about bamboo fabrics which was said about it. Enticed by those eye-catching ads I finally placed order for few bath towels and napkins.

I got the delivery pretty soon. The first look of the towels was quite impressive, nice feel, good looks and lightweight. Very interesting indeed. Being curious about something new, my attention went to the label where some details of the product are generally available.

I got two types of towels, one type was Turkish towel and another type was simple towel like a piece of little thick cloth. In the Turkish towel I found the composition material was written as bamboo rayon and cotton. The other towels were said to be made of hundred percent bamboo rayon. I was sort of baffled as I was expecting it to be some kind of fiber made directly of bamboo itself just like a jute or say linen.

I an quite familiar with the Rayon but Bamboo Rayon? Sounded odd. So I started looking about Bamboo Rayon in Internet. As expected Bamboo Rayon turned out to be nothing but regular Rayon but the raw material used is bamboo instead of cotton cellulose or other cellulose sources. Many of you may know that Rayon is a kind of artificial fiber created out of cotton or any other cellulose material. To start with the cellulose is dissolved in a chemical called carbon disulphide and then extruded into fine fibers in an acidic media. The result is the beautiful product called rayon.

So in what way bamboo rayon is different from other rayons?  Actually it is not different at all. Whatever may be the source cellulose, once converted into rayon they become all the same. Rayon production is not eco-friendly process because of the use of hazardous chemicals like carbon disulphide and the process is not friendly to the workers working over there.

It was an eye-opener for me and I just wanted to share this information.