The Philippines’ Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) recently turned over a first set of new bamboo school desks to students as part of a new bamboo development project. The project is intended to promote the cultivation and use of bamboo to help in mitigating climate change. The plan is to supply about 25 percent of the Philippines’ Department of Education’s desk requirements.

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The Bamboo Bike Studio is run by three men in their late 20s who know a lot about bamboo and a lot about bicycles. On a cool autumn morning, two of them are out on a bamboo harvest — in a dense grove near New Brunswick, N.J. Justin Aguinaldo and Sean Murray carry a small Japanese pull saw and a caliper to find bamboo stems that are 1 1/2 inches thick. When they find stems that are just right, they tap the bamboo to make sure it’s not too soft: “If the bamboo’s too watery, it’s not as dense and it’s not as strong,” Aguinaldo explains.

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The United States recently moved one step closer to energy independence this past Friday as the Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, announced the first wave of grant money towards biofuel. Advanced biofuels are those that do not rely on the corn kernel starch, with cellulosic ethanol being created from plant material such as switch grass, forest waste, fast-growing trees like bamboo and wood chips.

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Mankato, Minn. entrepreneur April Femrite has an interesting story to tell. She manufactures clothing from bamboo fibers. If you don’t know her business yet, you might soon. She’s a finalist for the Forbes.com “Boost your Business” competition, a sort of “American Idol” for entrepreneurs looking to make it big, or at least bigger.

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