Star Bamboo Singapore

What better way to start the year than to be featured in a interior design magazine? It certainly gets the ball rolling for the next 12 months.

Square Rooms is one of the more established interior magazines in Singapore. We’re pleased to have the chance to contribute to their feature article “Eco-chic choices that won’t cost the earth”.

This year, going eco-friendly will be the in-thing for home owners. But many people are unsure of how to take the plunge.

Check out the latest issue of Square Rooms for accessible advice on how to adopt a more eco-friendly lifestyle.

Our bamboo flooring is under the first section “Get floored”.

I love puns.

Don’t be mistaken – the photo shows samples of our bamboo flooring.

Our standard planks are much longer at about 1m, and can go up to 1.8m.

Some of the nice things they said:

“Bamboo flooring is also scratch resistant and very hard wearing, providing excellent protection from staining by spills or chemicals.”

“… using bamboo is kinder to the environment and in the long run, can be kinder on your pocket too.”

“Star Bamboo offers 100% eco-friendly bamboo flooring that gives you the natural beauty of hardwood flooring, the durability and practicality of laminates, and prices that won’t burn a hole in your pocket.”

For the full article, get Square Rooms from a news stand near you!

Some great news to share with you: Star Bamboo just inked a substantial US dollar six-figure deal with an established distributor of handcrafted home accessories and gift-ware.

We will be producing eco-friendly bamboo chopping boards for them to be distributed via supermarkets in Germany.

Some examples of our bamboo chopping boards – see more over here

We have been expanding beyond bamboo flooring for some time now, and it’s heartening to finally see our efforts and quality recognised by a major European company.

Bamboo is such a versatile material, we have only just started scratching the surface of what is possible with it.

The hardness of bamboo makes it a logical choice for chopping boards. But did you know that bamboo also has natural anti-bacterial which helps to prevent bacterial growth? This gives great peace of mind for our users.

That is why bamboo chopping boards is superior to plastic ones. Wooden chopping boards are good too, but do we really want to be chopping down yet more trees?

OK, we’re looking forward to more good news from our Europe markets. I’ll definitely be keeping you updated.

The Straits Times newspaper today quoted Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister S. Jayakumar citing Singapore as a shining example of balancing business and environmental interests.

Singapore has the “world’s busiest port yet the seawaters here are home to 32% of the world’s corals“.

Hmm, I never realised that our little island has a third of the world’s coral reefs.

On closer reading, the figure actually refered to the number of species. That’s still pretty impressive, as we apparently have more coral species than the Great Barrier Reef.

Great Barrier Reef. Not Singapore.

But numbers don’t tell the whole story.

The visibility in Singapore waters is appalling due to heavy sea traffic and land reclamation works. There was once I went scuba-diving at Pulau Hantu (“Ghost Island’), a small island to the south of mainland Singapore.

It was like diving in mud, I couldn’t see beyond 10cm.

I could only catch a glimpse of the corals if I press my face right next to them and keep completely still. Any movement will kick up the silt on the bed.

The few corals I could find look shrunken, pale, and nothing like the colourful and vibrant structures you see in diving magazines.

There were hardly any marine life around either. A lone clownfish was the find of the day.

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About 14 years ago, four of the Southern islands were filled up and combined into Jurong Island which houses a huge petrochemical complex today.

I was involved in the reef rescue operation at one of the islands, Pulau Ayer Chawan, and still have the t-shirt to prove it.

A team of volunteer divers forcibly plucked up the coral reefs and brought them up in baskets. My job was simply to haul them onto the boat.

The plan was to transplant the corals at Sentosa island.

Corals are hugely sensitive organisms. As you can imagine, not many survived the traumatic experience.

Those that did last till today have another problem to contend with. Sentosa Island is now being redeveloped into a casino and theme park.

I don’t know what will happen to the corals now, but you can be sure that in Singapore, economic interests will always trump all others.