Francisco Gallo Mejia’s project of using Guadua Bamboo for building environment sustainable houses won the Altran Foundation for Innovation 2008 Award. The Engineered bamboo developed retains the carbon absorbed by the bamboo, avoids its dispersion and so reduces CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The high performance of this material is due to the intrinsic properties of bamboo and its manufacturing process. The Bamboo absorbs about 30% more carbon than other species and has a quick and easy growth (up to 21 cm/day). The Engineered bamboo requires, for its fabrication, a little energy and small machines to produce a high quality composite material. The innovative ease of this new composite manufacturing makes the whole project reproducible in other geographical areas. Another advantage is the development of Latin American local economies where the manufacturing takes place: people will play the main part in the whole project. Locals will grow bamboo and create small network of industries to turn Guadua into building materials and produce environment sustainable houses.

This sounds interesting. Can this be grown in North America? One of your points is "the development of Latin America..." All for Latin America economies developing, but part of being green is the reduction of transportation costs. In order for this product to truly be green, it would need to grow here in the US.