Sustainable Sheets:

We look at bamboo bedding

Bamboo wood obviously isn’t super-soft in its natural state – which explains why workers can put it up as scaffolding around a building. How, then, does it get to be so luxuriously comfy by the time it reaches the bedsheets on your bed? Okooko by European Bedding specialises in silky soft bamboo sheets; we asked the team to explain the manufacturing background.

“The traditional process is one that takes raw bamboo and creates bamboo fibres known as viscose or rayon. However, this is detrimental to the environment since it uses harmful chemicals like sulphuric acid, sodium hydroxide and chlorinated bleach to breakdown bamboo cellulose and convert it to fibre.

“Creating bamboo lyocell, on the other hand, is a more eco-friendly process; fewer chemicals are used, and they’re never released into the soil as a by-product. It’s a ‘closed-loop’ manufacturing process; so, the solution used to make fibres out of the bamboo pulp is 99 percent recaptured and reused.”

The upshot? Lyocell is the most cost-effective and eco-friendly bamboo fibre on the market today – which is why it’s the product of choice for Okooko, in the form of its Heveya Organic Bamboo Lyocell sheets. What’s more, the company’s manufacturing partner only uses bamboo from FSC-certified plantations, and it is WRAP-certified as well, which means an ethical workplace for its employees.