KAWAYAN TECH ON BAMBOO BIKES IN THE PHILIPPINES

Kawayan Tech-We Grow Your Bikes!

Bamboo has 1,500 uses. It is produced, used, consumed, utilized in agriculture, reforestation, construction, transportation, shelter, furniture, clothing, infrastructure, health, ecosystem rehabilitation, even in information technology. As Michael Block of Green Living Tips wrote, you can eat, wear, and build with bamboo. The Philippine Department of Science and Technology (DOST) notes that Thomas Edison supposedly used a carbonized bamboo filament in his experiments in developing the light bulb. Alexander Graham Bell also used bamboo for his first phonograph needle. Patricia Mayville-Cox calls it the new cotton. In David Farrelly’s The Book of Bamboo, bamboo has uses from A-Z.

Interest is high because of bamboo’s characteristics. It is a grass of the family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, and tribe Bambuseae. Bamboo has around 92 genera and at least 1,000 species. It is present practically all over the world. In the Philippines, where it is generally called “kawayan,” there are 62 bamboo species grown, 21 species of which are endemic to the country. Ten are commercially-important species. Bamboo is present and/or grown in an area covering an estimated 39,200 to 52,700 ha. (Rojo 1999). Thus, bamboo is a renewable resource, grows fast, is durable, has natural beauty, is easy to maintain, and has many commercial applications including as a replacement of wood. It captures carbon dioxide. It is a green material. It promotes green technology and innovation.
Bamboo bikes

There are exciting developments vis-à-vis bamboo and biking. In this era of volatile oil prices and global warming, biking is getting a second look as a healthy and cheap alternative vehicle. In recent years, innovative designers have taken to bamboo as the material for bike frames. Craig Calfee of Calfee Design has designed and tested a bamboo bike and concludes that they are just as good, if not better than the usual high-tech materials used. His high-performance bamboo bike frames sell in the $2500 range.

Calfee is not only a bike businessman, but someone who believes in the potential of the bike to help societies. He partnered up with the Earth Institute at Columbia University to develop a bamboo bike program in Ghana. The potential to scale up and replicate is significant.

Inspired by Calfee, Bruno Meres, an engineer and industrial designer based in Bratislava, Slovakia, designed his own bamboo bike. His innovation is a woven bamboo bike frame. After one year of intense use, the bike is in good shape. He also noted that bamboo makes the bike ride less jarring.

Bamboo bikes have a long history. The Veteran Cycle Club notes that in England, Patent No.8274 filed on April 26, 1894, was on a bamboo bike. In the London Stanley Show of 1894, bamboo bikes were a show sensation. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a company named London Stanley sold a bamboo bike model in 1898.  Bike frames built using bamboos are appealing because the tensile strength of bamboo is 28,000 Newtons per square inch.  This is greater than steel which has a tensile strength of 23,000 Newtons per square inch (KPMG 2008).  A four foot “kawayan tinik” culm can support a load of four tons according to Filipino bamboo researchers.

Bamboo should be a leading material in the Philippines and Filipinos should be experts in bamboo application. Afterall, it is part and parcel of our culture, history, and environment. We’ve used it for housing, furniture, ritual, games, food, medicine, tools, etc. Heck, we even have one of the most spectacular bamboo organs in the world,  the Las Piñas Bamboo organ.  Gerry Brioso referred us to the bamboo jeep in Bangued, Abra, where government worker Chris Adriatico built a bamboo jeep as early as 1992. Local officials also use a bamboo vehicle in official activities to promote bamboo use in the province.  It is kitschy, but it is an attention getter.  In Tabontabon, Leyte, they’ve made the bamboo jeep an integral part of the ecotourism and livelihood intiatives.

Bamboo is high tech and green tech.   Bamboo technology and products are a sustainable social entrepreneurial enterprise for Filipinos.

Last July 6-11, 2009, Craig Calfee visited the Philippines and conducted a one week training workshop to select interested parties in the Yap Farm, Municipality of San Jose, Province of Tarlac.  Kawayan Tech/Kawayan Tek, a newly formed group by alumni members of the University of the Philippines Mountaineers (U.P. Mountaineers/UPM), participated in the workshop and produced its first bamboo bike as taught by Craig Calfee.  This is actually the second bamboo bike built by the group (visual artist Eng Chan was the lead builder).  The first was built using Filipino ingenuity.

Vision

The vision of Kawayan Tech, Philippines is to promote a lifestyle of health and sustainability using bamboo as a alternative and appropriate, community-based technology with practical applications.

Mission :

The mission of Kawayan Tech covers the following:

1.    Leverage bamboo technology as a means of promoting sharing, caring, and sacrifice, social justice, community solidarity and mobilization, and partnerships with different sectors of society.

2.    Promote sustainable human development through bamboo technology.

3.    Promote and develop bamboo as an indigenous technology.

4.    Promote bamboo planting, reforestation species, and bamboo nurseries.

5.    Initiate social entrepreneurship enterprises around bamboo technology.

6.    Develop partnerships with individuals, groups, and the government in the hope of transforming their outlook on bamboo, the environment, and development.

7.    Make the Philippines a regional if not global leader in bamboo technology and products.

Objectives

Kawayan Tech Philippines seeks to:

1.    Design, develop, market bamboo products, technologies, and services;

2.    Develop indigenous forms of bikes and other alternative means of transport such as a bamboo bike and bamboo skateboard as social entrepreneurship initiatives with expansion and replication goals;

3.    Establish a clearinghouse on research and development on bamboo technology in the Philippines;

4.    Develop in partnerships with individuals, groups, and organizations, bamboo nurseries and production facilities for bamboo products;

5.    Market locally and abroad bamboo products;

6.    Provide consultancy services on bamboo technologies;

7.    Other activities related to bamboo propagation and technology; and,

8.    Influence policy making on transportation and investment in indigenous modes of and technologies on transportation.

Development of bamboo bikes in the Philippines