Bamboo Bike, BamBike, Strives To Make Philippines Less Polluted (VIDEO)

How can you make a green form of transportation even greener? Bryan McClelland may have the answer: bamboo bikes.

McClelland has created the BamBike, a bicycle made out of bamboo. The bicycles are made in Manila, Phillipines, which Reuters reports is one of the most polluted capitals in the world. The bikes, costing around $500, are built by local skilled laborers, and the company advertises that as "a company that is interested in helping out people and the planet," their bicycles are made with fair-trade labor.

The BamBike frame is made out of cut and dried bamboo lumber and wrapped with Manila hemp fibers. According to McClelland, bamboo is "one of the greenest building materials on earth, so bicycles built out of bamboo are, more or less, the greenest way to get around."

Not everyone has jumped on the bamboo bandwagon. Some locals are skeptical of the bike's durability, although McClelland claims that compared to metal, bamboo has the same tensile strength and a higher strength to weight ratio.

What do you think? Would you ride a bamboo bike?

WATCH the building of a bamboo bike:

Comments

[aaronsmith102]

01:34 AM on 02/17/2011

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[Meesterclean]

06:54 PM on 02/15/2011

The first bicycles were made of bamboo.

[gemshews]

09:23 AM on 02/15/2011

heck yeah , why not ride a bamboo machine

[somewhatodd]

06:04 PM on 02/14/2011

by far the most sustainable bikes are the millions languishing in garages and storerooms and backyards all over the u.s.

[anthroguy]

05:03 PM on 02/14/2011

The technology is there. Bamboo bikes work. (And their ride quality has been compared to titanium by at least one reviewer.) I wouldn't hesitate to buy one, if the cost ever came down (American-made ones sell in the $2000 range).

In this case, $500 isn't as big a bargain as you'd think. $500 is a fortune for most Filipinos, especially when $50 or $100 gets you a very serviceable steel bike from China.

[deepfreezevideo]

04:57 PM on 02/14/2011

I'd vote for bamboo as a framing substitute in home construction, but I don't think I would want to see it used in something that moves.

[time2impeach]

03:54 PM on 02/14/2011

The tensile strength may be greater than steel, but what is of greater importance is elastic versus plastic yield. With glass, for instance, the two are almost equal, so that as soon as glass starts to bend, it breaks. I'd be very curious as to how bamboo reacts to and recovers from repeated bending stress.

[dwhuston]

09:14 AM on 02/15/2011

It works great. I have a bamboo fishing rod that I got from my father that I still use. I'm 62 and he had it before I was born. It bends just fine :)

[emphatico]

12:05 PM on 02/14/2011

The weight of an average American would break it.

[jamalc]

11:38 AM on 02/14/2011

I don't think it could withstand jumping off of a flight of steps

[ThinkCreeps]

07:47 AM on 02/14/2011

The amount of materials and manufacturing energy required to make any bicycle is minute. Whether it's bamboo or not only makes a little difference to its already excellent greenness.

[Subterfuge]

01:06 AM on 02/14/2011

This would be great in NYC.

[jessie tobias]

07:40 PM on 02/25/2011

Check out Bamboobikestudio.com in Brooklyn. You can build your own and support their mission to set up a factory in Ghana. I build my bike there. The process is amazing and the bike is fantastic.

[Pyka5]

10:21 PM on 02/13/2011

I could see those catching on in the US, light and strong, looks very trendy.

[MSROADKILL612]

09:42 PM on 02/13/2011

My take is historical. Imagine if this had got traction when steel was scarce and poor quality. A bike which approached modern lightness and function many years sooner.

Bamboo is indeed a wonderful material. The scaffolding in china is a wonder to behold.

My guess is you could even train it to grow into certain shapes - a front fork e.g. A little bit of resin here and there for extra strength and I could see it competing with carbon fiber.

[1donewrong]

08:01 PM on 02/13/2011

well we had a bunch of americans vote for a bab00n party the dems

[JWIII]

12:37 PM on 02/14/2011

actually that was in 2000 and again in 2004, and that little monkey laid waste to a nation.
Now they call themselves tea baggers, should be the banana peel smokers ;-)

Now grow a set,sell your car, and ride.

[Derek Lantin]

07:05 PM on 02/13/2011

Sir

I enjoyed reading your delightful article about the bamboo bike. The Philippinos are a hard working and innovative people and I wish them the best of success with this project..

Your article quotes a price per bike of about $500 Sadly, that would be un-affordable to the vast majority of people in the Philippines.

Sincerely, Derek Lantin. http://dereklantin.booksabuzz.com

[Moder8tion]

11:25 PM on 02/13/2011

Not just unaffordable to them but most people in the US too. I couldn't spend more than $250 for a bike. It's not to say it wouldn't make a nice niche item though.

[Maschine]

11:58 AM on 03/06/2011

Way too expensive even if you factor in environmental costs. If you are going to make something "better" it has to be cheaper or be superior, if you hit both sweet spots you have a real winner.