Sourcing Sustainable Bamboo Flooring

Reader Contribution by Jennifer Kongs
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The Small Home, Big Decisions series follows Jennifer and her husband, Tyler, as they build a self-reliant homestead on a piece of country property in northeastern Kansas. The series will delve into questions that arise during their building process and the decisions they make along the way. The posts are a work in progress, written as their home-building adventure unfolds.

Bamboo flooring has developed quite a name for itself as a green flooring option. Even though MOTHER EARTH NEWS has covered why to choose bamboo, our initial research left us worrying that bamboo had been thoroughly greenwashed. We read of bamboo monoculture forests being planted after a native forest was clear cut, we knew the transportation from overseas would add many pounds of CO2 to the product’s environmental impact, we worried the resins and glues that hold the strands of bamboo together were highly toxic in many products, and we’d heard that bamboo is soft and easily damaged. Turns out, we were wrong. At least sometimes.

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