Star Bamboo Singapore

Yesterday, I was gushing over the Flexible Love accordion folding chair, for its innovative use of recycled materials.

Making use of recycled material is great, but it has a big image issue. No matter how you spin it, recycled materials just sounds cheap and low-rent.

The solution to that is renewable materials.

That is why the fast-growing bamboo is the ideal eco-friendly material for flooring, and furniture too.

Bamboo poles has long been used to make furniture. But the designs were traditional and stale, essentially unchanged for decades.

Then along came bamboo flooring, and manufacturers hit upon the idea of using the material for table tops.

When we first used our bamboo material to make modern bamboo furniture, we were the first company to exhibit such products at the International Furniture Fair Singapore (IFFS) 2006.

It was a radical departure from the traditional bamboo pole furniture. Visitors were pleasantly surprised to find that our furniture were actually created from bamboo.

This tremendous interest in bamboo continued to snowball.

By the IFFS show in 2007, the awareness of bamboo reached new heights with two winners at the Furniture Design Awards with bamboo-inspired creations.

I’m sure we will see even more creative use of bamboo in furniture in the coming year.

That means more competition for us, but more choices for the eco-conscious consumer. And that can only be good.