What Are Your Thoughts on Bamboo?

This holiday season we bought a recipe box for a friend. We looked all over for the right one, and settled on a bamboo box from Bed, Bath & Beyond. In all honesty, we bought it because we thought it was pretty ... not because it was bamboo.

Lately, we've had mixed emotions about all the bamboo products we're seeing everywhere—they seem to get the green stamp of approval no matter what.

And we get it: It's hard to deny that bamboo has the potential to be an unbelievably green material. It's a grass. It grows like crazy. It should be the perfect green replacement for wood in so many instances. A bamboo recipe box seems like it should be greener than a wood one. Right?

Well, we used to feel really good about bamboo. But then we started hearing about how far it is shipped and how it is, in many cases, being farmed in an unsustainable way. We started looking at bamboo differently.

Now, unless a bamboo product is FSC-certified (like Smith & Fong's Plyboo flooring) we're pretty wary of the stuff. We don't know if it's rational ... but we've become skeptics.

What about you? How do you feel about bamboo products these days?

(Image: Bed, Bath & Beyond)

Comments (2)

I don't consider something green unless it is certified by someone I trust. Bamboo has a lot of potential to be green, but I almost never see anything certifying it. Taking a quick glance at wikipedia, I found that companies have been selling bamboo rayon (chemicals used in creation) have been being called "bamboo fabric". The FTC apparently has started to crack down on this last year which is good, but I ideally want organically grown bamboo. The organic label is only meaningful on food in the US (Yay USDA Organic label!), so there is a lot of 'organic' non-food items that aren't organic. You have to find companies that certify something as genuine organic (and trust they actually do what they are suppose to).

I find it really hard to buy green. I tend to buy stuff labeled organic or natural and hope for the best when I don't get a chance to research. Sometimes after I bring it home I find out it isn't very green (although often a little greener then some of the alternatives).

I think you're right to be skeptical.. I find it relatively easy to make green choices when it comes to food (except fish is a minefield), but for home goods it's a nightmare. FSC is really the only label I trust, everything else I don't know what to do.

Got to say though, that's a really nice recipe box!