I remember when Star Bamboo first started production in 2001, there were concerns over the viability of the business.
People could see that our bamboo flooring product was lovely and durable, but they wondered if eco-friendly products would do well in a market where price was often the prime consideration.
Would people be willing to spend their money on eco-friendly products?
A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down and orders a sandwich. After he finishes eating the sandwich, the panda pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter, and then stands up to go.
“Hey!” shouts the manager. “Where are you going? You just shot my waiter and you didn’t pay for your sandwich!”
The panda yells back at the manager, “Hey man, I am a PANDA! Look it up!”
The manager opens his dictionary and sees the following definition for panda: “A tree-dwelling marsupial of Asian origin, characterised by distinct black and white colouring. Eats shoots and leaves.”
Something to brighten up your week.
But seriously, I have received queries from concerned customers wondering if our bamboo flooring enterprise is depriving those endangered pandas of their food source.
The short answer is, No. We use a different species of bamboo from what pandas eat.
Lucy Siegle of The Observer asked a slightly different question: Will the focus on commercially viable species of bamboo result in monoculture, and lead to the extinction of the other species, including the ones that pandas depend on for sustenance?
She’s right to point out that making a product out of bamboo, however renewable and fast-growing it may be, does not automatically qualify it as an eco-friendly product. The source of the bamboo is just as crucial.
Star Bamboo only uses bamboo material that has been certified by the local Shaowu government. It has a programme in place to manage the harvesting of bamboo in the region.
It is also important to note that the species of bamboo we use, commonly known as Moso, is native to the region. It was not a species imported for commercial reasons.
Ms Siegle also remarked:
Material scientists also question the way bamboo is processed, predominantly in China, using elemental chlorine (which produces toxic dioxins) and where there are little to no standards or controls governing air emissions and liquid effluents.
Well, we don’t use a chemical as toxic and difficult to handle as chlorine in our production.
Instead, hydrogen peroxide is our preferred choice. It achieves a good bleaching effect for our Natural bamboo flooring, and the by-products are only oxygen and water.
It is costly too, which explains why Natural bamboo flooring is generally priced higher than Carbonised bamboo flooring.
So back to the question, do bamboo flooring manufacturers steal food from pandas?
The long answer is, it depends on the practices and ethics of the manufacturer. So please purchase only from responsible manufacturers, and market forces will ensure that the pandas do not go hungry.
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.
Today, I’ve had two quotations rejected.
Of course, not every quotation that I submit gets accepted. But in both cases, the customer says “Sorry, it’s beyond my budget“. They were comparing it to cheap laminates.
Yes, it’s more expensive than laminates, simply because bamboo flooring is in a different league altogether. Comparing the all-natural bamboo to artificial laminate floors are like comparing apples and oranges.
After all, bamboo flooring is a natural hardwood. So how does bamboo flooring compare against, say, oak or teak flooring?
Well, bamboo flooring inherently has a higher cost of production than wooden flooring. Imagine the amount of work that goes into making beautiful flooring planks from the humble bamboo pole. Then compare this to simply chopping down trees and putting the logs through the saw.
But it doesn’t cost as much as you would think.
We price our flooring competitively to encourage customers to give it a try. For example here in Singapore, the price is closely pegged to that of teak, one of the most popular tropical wood species here.
So next time you’re considering changing your floors, just give us a buzz for a quote on our eco-friendly, prefinished bamboo flooring.
You might be pleasantly surprised.
