Published by Lily Korhonen under Building Supplies, Green Building, Sustainable Products

Unless you’ve been living in a dirt-floored cave for a decade, you already know that bamboo is a great, green alternative to hardwood flooring. Classified as a grass, bamboo can grow as much as 12 inches a day, and after being cut, will renew itself in as short a time as three to five years—much faster than any hardwood.

Sounds mighty eco-friendly to me—so why not just order up a load for your next flooring project?

Hang on, not so fast. Ask yourself two questions: First, is the bamboo you’re set on sustainably grown? Second, is it toxin-free, or are there toxins lurking inside or even outside the product? Until recently, positive answers to both of these questions were not available.

But now we’re in luck. Industry leader Smith & Fong Plyboo is on top of these issues with PlybooPure, a product they introduced earlier this year. It’s the first bamboo flooring to be made without urea formaldehyde (UF) and to carry Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification.

In recognition of this achievement, PlyBooPure was named one of the Top 10 Green Products of 2008 at last week’s Greenbuild Expo in Boston. BuildingGreen, publisher of Environmental Building News, selected the winners from more than 200 new products added to their GreenSpec directory this year.

The BuildingGreen staff maintains a database of better than 2,000 product listings to help designers and architects select sustainable materials for their clients.

Smith & Fong Plyboo is not a newcomer to greener pastures. They’re known for manufacturing low-emissions flooring and plywood products that meet or exceed United States regulations governing formaldehyde. In late 2007 they converted their manufacturing plants in China and Taiwan to a UF-free production process; as a result, fully half of their 2008 plywood and flooring output will be UF-free PlybooPure.

I’m encouraged by companies in the mold of Smith & Fong Plyboo that take leadership positions and get out ahead of government regulations. When the California Air Resources Board (CARB) set new regulations to reduce and eliminate formaldehyde from composite wood products last year, every Plyboo product had already surpassed the agency’s strictest emission levels. PlyBooPure now goes one step further by completely eliminating UF.

Since PlybooPure is a process and not a single product, Smith & Fong offers several lines with the PlybooPure designation, including Plyboo, PlybooStrand, Neopolitan Strand, and Durapalm coconut-palm flooring and plywood. Take a look at the options—you’ll find flat grain, edge grain, and a range of colors and textures.

Stepping back from Smith & Fong for a moment, one of the Green by Design watchwords is that there are many dimensions to being green, and we mean to address them all. To choose products that are green through and through, we need more assurance than the word ‘eco-friendly’ stamped onto the packaging. Simply knowing an item is made of bamboo does not suffice.

Every aspect—including country of origin, raw materials sustainability, manufacturing processes, finishes, packaging, durability, recyclability, and a given manufacturer’s business practices—is part of the bigger equation. When a company like Smith & Fong dedicates itself to each of these lifecycle elements, we know we’re headed in the right direction.

And the next time I leave snowy Ontario to visit the Green by Design world headquarters in San Francisco, I’ll book the Woody Harrelson Suite at the Hotel Triton (pictured at the top of the blog) and enjoy the Plyboo Strand flooring that glows there.

Congratulations and three cheers to Smith & Fong!