If you’ve ever owned an item of bamboo clothing before, you will know that bamboo makes for very comfortable clothing.

For anyone who has never experienced bamboo clothing firsthand, your association with bamboo may very well be that it’s a tall tree (it’s actually a grass) that grows in the wild and is perhaps used to make flooring and furniture.

But clothing? After all, cotton flooring doesn’t make sense! But quite the contrary, bamboo is in many cases even more eco-friendly than cotton as a wearable material.

Bamboo is so much more than a beautiful grass providing beauty to landscapes all over the world. It is more than that lucky sprig of bamboo you have displayed on the counter in your home. Its sustainability and durability make it a great flooring product, a great furniture maker, and among other things, YES, a luxurious clothing material.

Bamboo matures swiftly into harvest (about 3-5 years), it is abundant, naturally anti-bacterial, biodegradable, grows clean, doesn’t affect a whole rain forest when it is harvested, and grows all over the world in many climates.

Created by grinding bamboo stalks down to a pulp, bamboo clothing can be processed bleach free and using harmless dyes to create a variety of fashionable colors.

But there are potential drawbacks to bamboo clothing too.

While the fabric itself is not inherently toxic, a common process used to make bamboo clothing is considered to not be good for the environment. This is the same production process used for making petroleum-based textiles like rayon/viscose, and uses toxic chemicals like sulfuric acid and carbon disulfide, the latter of which has been shown to cause damage to the nervous and reproductive systems to workers who have been repeatedly exposed to it.

This is why it is very important to verify how your bamboo clothing is manufactured. For one, look for a certification of bamboo lyocell from OEKO-TEX, which is widely considered to be the gold standard in certifying environmentally friendly and non-toxic textiles.

What makes bamboo lyocell more environmentally friendly is that it’s manufactured in a closed-loop system without carbon disulfide. By recycling water and non-toxic chemicals used in the manufacturing process, the process from harvest to shelf is less energy intensive and non-pollutive.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of greenwashing surrounding bamboo clothing. The good news is that the FTC has been cracking down on how bamboo clothing is labelled, having gone so far to fine some big brands like JC Penny and Bed Bath & Beyond for continuing to sell textiles misleadingly labelled as being 100% bamboo. Retailers are now required to state if their bamboo clothing is made from rayon.

Also look for clothing labelled as bamboo linen, which bypasses the chemical breakdown process by mechanically separating bamboo fibers and spinning them into yarn.

Bottom line, if there is a lack of transparency on the label, don’t buy it. If it’s too good of a deal, exercise even more diligence vetting the manufacturing process. There’s a reason why bamboo clothing became a victim of rayon in the first place. The chemicals used help speed up the process and lower manufacturing costs.

This is why the team here at Save With Green prides itself on vetting and recommending bamboo clothing that is truly sustainable and non-toxic. And it’s icing on the cake when we find you good deals on organic bamboo clothing!