Booshoot, Mount Vernon, Wash., USA, a biotechnology company focused on bamboo forestry, agriculture, and nursery wholesale, and Kimberly-Clark (K-C), Dallas, Texas, this week announced a development agreement that will enable K-C to explore the manufacturing of tissue products containing fiber derived from Booshoot's proprietary bamboo propagation technology. The partnership marks a significant breakthrough for the tissue industry, as the companies will work together to develop high-yield fiber alternatives that can be grown domestically on a mass agricultural scale in environmentally and socially responsible ways.
According to the agreement, Booshoot will deliver tens of thousands of bamboo starts to be grown in K-C pilot projects. The trials are designed to prove the viability of several species of giant bamboos, including "Moso" (Phyllostachys edulis), as a scalable and sustainable tree fiber alternative. Where conventional northern softwood trees take 60 or more years to reach harvestable maturity, Moso grows close to 100 ft tall and is harvestable in less than a decade, producing several times the fiber of traditional timber, and capturing four times the carbon dioxide of most trees.
"We are pleased to be working with such an established global leader in the tissue industry, and to play a role helping Kimberly-Clark meet their ambitious environmental targets," said Booshoot CEO Jackie Heinricher. "Booshoot has the proven science and production capacity required to eventually produce millions of bamboo plants annually, which will play a critical part in reducing the world's dependence on native forests."
Gordon Knapp, president of North American Consumer Tissue for K-C, said that "as a leader in bamboo technology, Booshoot is well positioned to support Kimberly-Clark's objective to develop sustainable fiber alternatives and take them to commercial scale. Introducing alternatives to natural forest fiber to our supply chain is important to our goals associated with responsible fiber sourcing as well as our goals to improve management of input cost risk and variability."
In 2011 K-C used nearly 750,000 metric tons of primary wood fiber sourced from natural forests. The agreement with Booshoot is designed to help K-C meet its pledge to cut the amount of natural forest fiber in half by the year 2025, an amount equivalent to the fiber used to manufacture more than three billion rolls of toilet paper.
Booshoot's patent-pending bamboo are "true to type" species that are not genetically modified, producing more biomass on less land, in less time than other traditional forest products. In addition to providing fiber for the paper industry, bamboo from Booshoot is an ideal raw material for everything from textiles to biofuels to building materials.
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