That's a little how this bike feels to ride. When you played with a bamboo cane as a child, and swished it through the air, it felt like energy incarnate. Worryingly, it's incredibly light and looks fragile, but it does come with a 10-year guarantee. It's one of Calfee's racing bikes I'm riding today, all £3,000 of it (available in the UK via Eco Age). Because of the climate there, the raw material grows well, and local people could be trained to produce the frames themselves. He now builds high-end bamboo racing, mountain and cargo bikes, and is working on bringing cheap and simple utility bikes to Africa. He was one of the early pioneers of carbon fibre bikes, and he's been experimenting with bamboo since 2005. It's just never taken off.Ĭraig Calfee intends to change all that. In fact, look up English patent number 8274, filed in 1894, and you'll see that it's far from a new idea. So, why not build bikes from it, rather than more energy-intensive steel or carbon? There are definite environmental benefits to using bamboo as a raw material: it grows extremely quickly, requires minimal pesticides and water and is a prolific producer of oxygen. It's also smoked and heat treated, rather than chemically hardened. The cane used here, though, is reportedly grown responsibly in Taiwan's Yushan national park, and hand-picked before being shipped to bike manufacturer Calfee's California headquarters. Some bamboo production is far from green, causing biodiversity problems and creating toxic dioxins from treatment with chlorine. The largest of my bikes flexes so much when I corner hard that I can actually feel it distort underneath me.Īs well as such practicality, bamboo offers sustainability – so long as it's done right. Most people don't realise that bikes are not rigid, they warp and bend slightly when you ride them. Next time you're on your bike, find somewhere away from traffic and look down at your frame when you set off. But the important part is that it's also incredibly springy. In Asian countries it's often used as scaffolding, and even to reinforce concrete, so it's certainly strong. I'm standing astride a bike crafted from an armful of bamboo cane, about to push out into rush-hour traffic.Īs a material for a bicycle frame, it makes more sense than it sounds. The panda jokes are now a long way from my mind. News What's stopping the bamboo bike from shooting into the mainstream?
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