Star Bamboo Singapore

I get asked this a lot, “Why is bamboo flooring considered an eco-friendly product?”.

Even Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Singapore’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, asked me that question when we won the Silver Medal at the Eco Products International Fair in 2006.

Dr Yaacob (right) and I sharing a light-hearted moment at EPIF2006.
To the left is Dr Amy Khor, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

Bamboo flooring is eco-friendly because it is made from one of the world’s most renewable building materials.

There are over 1,000 species of bamboo all around the world.

We use a particular species of bamboo called Moso (“??” in Chinese), which commonly found in bamboo mountains of Southern China near our factory.

This Moso bamboo matures astonishingly quickly. In just 4 to 6 years, it is ready to be harvested for production. This is also when the quality of the bamboo culm is at its peak. The quality actually drops as the bamboo ages.

Compare this to the decades typically required for hardwood trees to mature, and your choice is clear.

Why does bamboo grow so fast? It’s because it’s technically a grass, and not a tree. It’s so fast that some species have been recorded to grow at a rate of 4 feet per day!

As a bonus, it doesn’t even require replanting. The bamboo forests are inter-connected by an underground network of nodes, and new shoots will grow after harvesting.

All this means that you can enjoy beautiful hardwood floors with a clear conscience that you are not harming our natural environment.

No wonder bamboo is truly the eco-champion of building materials.

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.