What if the “waste” in a bamboo plantation is actually the missing piece of the business model?
Before you have beautiful straight poles, that can turn into anything, you first have a lot of smaller, bent poles and other smaller branches from a bamboo clump. Especially plantations that have not been maintained, produce literally tons of bamboo poles that cannot be used for construction. But this is still great material that can, and should, be used. With just over 1,000 acres of bamboo in Uganda, factories that process bamboo are not yet lining up. The good news is that Bamboo Uganda was approached by Global Woods, for a collaboration to set up a bio-char factory. Biochar is a way to store carbon long term, for example by mixing it with nutrients and turning it into organic fertilizer. We therefore welcome Global Woods’ investment as an important step toward scaling Uganda’s bamboo industry.
The bio-char will be produced from off-cuts and commercially uninteresting poles (because of the shape). As a result, farmers will have a way of co-financing plantation maintenance by selling their “waste”. This will greatly improve plantation health, producing bigger, longer and straighter poles in the future.
A team consisting of Bamboo Uganda, Bijimu Bamboo Farming Services and GlobalWoods members has been in the field mapping and maintaining the first plantation earmarked to supply the biochar factory. We are proud to collaborate with one of Uganda’s bamboo pioneers, Dr. Koojo Charles of Kontiki Bamboo Works. Dr. Koojo and his partnering farmers have over 600 acres of bamboo together.
The past days in the field have focused on data collection to refine the business model of locking carbon in the ground using bamboo bio-waste:
How much waste do plantations actually produce?
What will future biomass look like?
And as a result of proper maintenance; how many big, healthy, straight poles could literally help build Uganda’s future?
Biochar might just be the missing link between maintenance and market access.