Bamboo Business

        The global market for bamboo is expected to be worth US$20 billion by 2015; the major use is for making paper. For example, the annual gross domestic product of China's bamboo industry increased from $24 billion to $4.4 billion in the two years from 2000. Between them, China, India and Myanmar have 19.8 million hectares of bamboo reserves - 80 percent of the world's bamboo forests. The other main countries producing bamboo are Bangladesh, Brazil, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Kenya, Malasia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tanzania and Thailand. You can eat it too. The 23 million people of taiwan consume 80,000 tonnes  of edible bamboo shoots anually.

        And in the Tamenglong district of Manipur, India, women make bamboo briquettes for heating and cooking. They mix powdered bamboo charcoal and mud in a 4:1 ratio. One kilogram of bamboo charcoal costing 2 cents can produce three honeycomb briquettes, and one person can easily produce about 50 briquettes per day. After deducting the cost of the raw bamboo charcoal materials, the women each earn a daily profit of $3.75.