House prices today make starting a new life in the woods filled with fruit-bearing trees look more promising. A tropical country like the Philippines needs housing materials to absorb less heat, but concrete, which is used to build most homes here, does the contrary. And like any other sector, the housing industry must also cut down on emissions.
What if the missing puzzle piece is just around all this time? Would you believe this material has a strength comparable to steel but is cheaper, cooler, and greener?

Tagged as “green steel,” bamboo is changing the way we build homes. With the help of non-profit Base Bahay Foundation (BASE) initiated by the Hilti Foundation, their cement-bamboo fusion fosters a circular economy and more affordable housing for Filipino communities.
Here’s a look at how sustainable housing is made possible with bamboo.
Cement-Bamboo Frame Technology
CBFT houses produce 60 percent less carbon footprint than conventional homes of the same type, according to BASE. Around 2,500 such homes can be found in the Philippines, Nepal, India, and Nicaragua.
Since bamboo doesn’t significantly absorb heat due to its insulating properties and hollow structure, these houses have a cooler and more comfortable indoor climate. Unlike conventional homes that use columns and beams, CBFT homes use structural shear walls for improved stability
"Bamboo can be used for other things other than furniture, chopsticks, toothpicks, etc. The challenge of advocating for bamboo in houses comes from the perception that it's only used for these purposes. Now that we have more bamboo structures and houses coming up, we feel that we're slowly starting to make a dent in the change of perception for bamboo,” said Paulo Carlo Ferrer, director of business and strategic development at BASE.

These structures have been tested to resist category five typhoons and wind speeds of up to 250 kilometers per hour in the Philippines. They also meet local requirements for resisting earthquakes of a magnitude of up to 8.4 and have a fire rating of up to two hours, proving that bamboo is just as strong, if not stronger than its counterparts.
The homes can be built in as short as six weeks, spanning foundation work, pre-fabrication of bamboo wall panels, panel installation, roofing, cladding, and finishing. CBFT can also be used to build non-residential structures, including offices, industrial facilities, commercial buildings, and schools, according to BASE.
“Bamboo is very accessible as a common resource to communities, and that makes it a very suitable and sustainable regrowing natural material,” he added.
Building a bamboo house can be 30 to 40 percent cheaper compared to a conventional house, BASE said.
If you can build three houses with a certain budget, you can then build four homes with the same budget with bamboo’s help, which allows LGUs to build on a larger scale, said Ferrer.
How bamboo is treated
Local farmers harvest raw bamboo poles to bring to BASE's treatment facility, which undergoes a series of training to ensure adherence to structural-grade standards.
After initial quality control to assess suitability as a building material, the poles undergo a pre-cleaning process involving washing and scrubbing. Once sanitized, the nodes are drilled on both sides to allow solutions to penetrate. They are soaked in a solution for three days to remove starch, which prevents termite infestations.

Once dried out, poles undergo a second quality control before they are treated with a solution, after which they are arranged on a rack in a dry area, away from direct sunlight.
“The role of Base Bahay is to characterize these bamboo species so that whenever we come across them in different parts of the Philippines, we would know whether they would be suitable for structural use,” he expressed. “Note that none of the bamboo housing ends up as a profit. It is centered on socialized housing.”
Bill for bamboo
A bill seeking to strengthen the use of bamboo as an eco-friendly construction material in high-rise structures was filed in Congress last July 2024.
House Bill 9144 or an “Act Integrating Bamboo as a Sustainable Material for the Built Environment,” filed by Rep. Jose Manuel Alba of Bukidnon, covers the development of the Bamboo Structural Code. This will set guidelines, standards, and best practices for using bamboo safely and sustainably in building design and construction.
"We're working with the Association of Structural Engineers of the Philippines to include bamboo in the National Structural Code of the Philippines. The data that we generate through research with different local and international universities is a big help to develop that code," Ferrer said.
The bill, after many authorities have visited bamboo treatment sites and several studies have been published promoting the material, is still pending committee review.