Soft Bedding

Everyone appreciates soft bed sheets!  From flannel sheets to bamboo bedding, soft bedding sheets make sleep pure pleasure!

Bamboo is one of the latest materials used to spin luxury and softness into washable fabric.

As bamboo becomes a more sustainable fabric, it holds many benefits such as fast, renewable growth.  If you are concerned about sustainable practices, watch for manufacturing and sourcing practices that might be less than desirable.  But since bamboo holds such potential for low-water use, low-toxin use in the agricultural stage, green and sustainable manufacturers are increasingly shaping up their green practices to grow this into a stellar green product.

There is no USDA organic certification for bamboo, which is why you won't see any bamboo products with the familiar organic logo. Unlike conventional cotton farming, bamboo crops grow quickly without requiring chemicals or pesticides. But -- and this is a big BUT -- most bamboo fabric is made through chemical processing. This processing makes the bamboo cloth feel like soft cotton -- but also requires some non-environmentally friendly  chemical use.

As Lee points out at Organic Clothing, most bamboo fiber is "chemically manufactured by “cooking” the bamboo leaves and woody shoots in strong chemical solvents such as sodium hydroxide (NaOH – also known as caustic soda or lye) and carbon disulfide in a process also known as hydrolysis alkalization combined with multi-phase bleaching."

Both of those chemicals are linked to health problems for the workers creating the fabrics.

Newer manufacturing facilities have begun using other technologies to chemically manufacture bamboo fiber that are more benign and eco-friendly. The chemical manufacturing process used to produce lyocell from wood cellulose can be modified to use bamboo cellulose.