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Scotland’s Innovative Craft group have organised an exhibition of sustainable products with One Eco Home for the duration of the Edinburgh Festival. They are showing the Grass cabinet as an example of sustainable furniture design.
Bamboo and straw domestic cabinet
Pli has just brought out a longer version of the Grass media table, appropriately called the Long table. It’s 2.4 metres long (or wide, depending how you look at it) - that’s 2400 millimetres of media equipment, files, books, bottles, wedding presents, bowls and flatmates you can store on its unbroken bamboo surface. You can learn more about the design here (click on the image)…
Bamboo is the un-official poster material of sustainable design. The article Bamboo, Part II: What’s so good about the stuff? from Core77 gives a quick rundown of the benefits of this versatile grass. However the most interesting part of the article is in the comments section.
It’s worth mentioning some of the negatives:
Bamboo varies hugely in quality. Younger bamboo is much softer, but much cheaper to produce (faster harvest cycle = more bamboo).
Bamboo is glued together with adhesives that are very often toxic. It’s a Chinese product and not seriously regulated. Some Bamboo (i.e. Woven Strand process which has more glue in it) was banned in Europe because of excessive VOC (volatile organic compounds) released into homes - including formaldehyde.
Also, in some places, bamboo has become so over harvested, the indigenous population which relied on bamboo for their homes, their food, their tools and so on are being starved.
It ain’t as pretty as it looks!
The Grass cabinet had a write up in this weekend’s Sunday Times Home section.
The green room
Not many cabinets can take all your entertainment kit, including cables, or have hinges that allow the doors to open 170 degrees. This one can, and it’s ecofriendly, too. Made from bamboo, with a wheat strawboard backing – both sustainable resources – it contains neither wood nor formaldehyde and uses low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) glues and binders.
Grass cabinet, W120cm x H57cm x D42cm, £499, from Pli Design;
020 8670 6857,www.plidesign.co.uk
The Telegraph Magazine has interviewed Christopher Pett from Pli to discuss bamboo as a sustainable material in contemporary furniture.
After a year’s design and development, Pli has started selling our Grass tables. The project was simple - to create a stylish collection of tables made from sustainable materials. Bamboo, straw and aluminium did the trick.
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