Plyboo and Durapalm plywood and flooring

Smith & Fong featured in Scientific American Earth 3.0

From the June 2009 Special Editions | 8 comments

Bamboo Boom: Is This Material for You?

It's not just for tiki torches anymore, but does this wood substitute really make for greener floors, clothing and other products?

By Michelle Nijhuis   

 

CREATIV STUDIO HEINEMANN/GETTY IMAGES

Daniel Smith remembers when he first tried to sell a bamboo floor. The San Francisco entrepreneur thought his woodlike product was attractive and durable, but when he took samples to a Dallas trade show in 1994, the reaction wasn’t quite what he had hoped for. No one believed the plant’s round stalks—then most familiar in the U.S. as the stuff of backyard torches—could be turned into a smooth, lasting floor.

“One architect said to me, ‘I appreciate that you’re at the cutting edge of design and development, but I don’t want to be cut by that edge,” Smith says.

Read the rest of the article here.

Plyboo.com selected by BtoB Magazine as one of "10 great BtoB websites"

BtoB Magazine, a marketing magazine owned by New York business periodical publisher Crain Communications, has selected Plyboo.com as one of this year's 10 best BtoB websites. Smith & Fong's site shares this designation in 2009 with such notable names as Office Depot, ADP and Getty Images. An excerpt of the story follows.

URL: www.plyboo.com
Target audience: Interior designers, architectural community, homeowners
Key Web executives: Dan Smith, president and founder; John McIsaac, public relations counsel for Smith & Fong at McIsaac Communications
No. of employees working on the site: 8
Last major redesign: First-quarter 2009
No. of pages on site: 215 pages
Web developer: In-house, as well as Pinch, a strategic design and brand development agency

As recently as six months ago, visitors arriving at the Plyboo.com Web site were directed to a press release. Those visitors were likely looking for product and installation specifications, and until recently, that information was often difficult to locate.

“One of the concerns we heard from architects and designers was that they couldn't find information fast enough,” said company President Dan Smith. “I remember you had to go to flooring and within flooring select a surface and within that section you had to choose a color. It was a five-step process to land in the place you were looking for. That was a very big deal.”

Read the rest of the story here.

Low-emitting or formaldehyde-free?

As the public and professional debate on indoor air quality goes on, building products are given adjectives like “low-emitting” or “urea formaldehyde-free” or “CARB-compliant.” It can be very confusing.

Smith & Fong prefers the term “formaldehyde-free,” and most of our products meet this standard.  That means no formaldehyde of any kind. The few that aren’t entirely formaldehyde-free incorporate phenol-formaldehyde (not urea) in their adhesive systems, but these products—as well as all Smith & Fong Plyboo, Durapalm and Sideways lines—are no-emitting. There’s no mistaking that.

All of Smith & Fong’s sheet-good products and most of our flooring products have passed California’s Section 01350 protocol, the most stringent standards on the planet, testing for 78 known VOCs found in composite wood products.  The USGBC recognizes 01350 as meeting or exceeding requirements for LEED credits  EQc4.3 and EQc4.4.

Smith & Fong is committed to a healthy indoor environment and to meeting or exceeding all current standards.

Smith & Fong's carbon footprint

Smith & Fong was founded on the principles of environmental protection, sustainability and social justice. In 2007 we began a program to eliminate urea formaldehyde from all our manufacturing processes.

To corroborate and track our progress on eliminating formaldehyde and other harmful chemicals from our products, we have undertaken to have all our products pass the California Section 01350 protocol, testing for 78 known VOC's found in manufactured wood products.

In January of 2008 we secured the first FSC certification for our bamboo forests, providing third-party verification to architects and designers who look to bamboo as a sustainable building material for LEED projects.

A more complex but equally important issue we have begun to tackle is Smith & Fong's carbon footprint, beginning in the bamboo forests of China and extending throughout our North American distribution channel. We're currently undertaking an exhaustive carbon-emission analysis of our manufacturing and transportation systems. As the data becomes available we will post this on our website. The net result of Smith & Fong's carbon study will be the establishment of a program to reduce and ultimately eliminate our carbon footprint.

Key areas we're studying now include:

Carbon output from our manufacturing operations

• Shipping and transportation emissions, from forest to distribution point
• Carbon footprint of office operations in San Francisco
• Carbon Credits and alternative measures that can be taken to offset or reduce carbon output    
• Bamboo forests' ability to sequester carbon and produce oxygen

Determining (and reducing) Smith & Fong’s carbon footprint

Smith & Fong is currently undergoing a comprehensive analysis of the company’s carbon footprint – from the bamboo forest to the North American distribution channel – and that information will be used to design and implement an effort to reduce (and hopefully eliminate or neutralize) its carbon emissions. When the data is fully compiled, Smith & Fong will make this information available via the web and begin the journey toward carbon-neutrality. In a more immediate way, the company has revamped the commute to work for its employees. Currently, just over 20 percent of Smith & Fong’s downtown San Francisco employees either take mass transit, walk or carpool to work. The company estimates that number to increase to roughly 60 percent by the end of July 2009.

New Plyboo FSC-certified veneer products

Smith & Fong is pleased to announce that, going forward, all of the company’s 0.6mm 4’x8’ Plyboo flat-grain and edge-grain bamboo veneers will be FSC-certified. In addition, Smith & Fong will soon be offering 0.6mm FSC edge-grain veneers in 4x10’ sheets.

Sideways FSC-certified, engineered hardwood flooring

Since the company’s inception in 1989, Smith & Fong’s name has been closely associated with bamboo products. Plyboo® was the first branded bamboo flooring introduced to the North American market, in 1993. The company followed with Plyboo plywood in 1996. In an exotic twist, Smith & Fong developed and commercialized Durapalm® coconut-palm plywood and flooring in 2001.

From a manufacturer primarily known for innovation and modern, sustainable design, the addition of an age-old product category like hardwood flooring to its range would seem unlikely. But Sideways, Smith & Fong’s new engineered hardwood flooring line, fits beautifully alongside Plyboo and Durapalm in the company’s stable of green, design-rich products. Sideways is FSC-certified and urea formaldehyde-free, contributing to both LEED MRc7 and IEQ 4.3, and its striking “sideways” grain pattern makes it ideal for many modern design environments, both commercial and residential.

FSC-Certified Bamboo Now Qualifies for LEED Credit MRc7

FSC-Certified Bamboo Now Qualifies for LEED Credit MRc7

Recent USGBC credit interpretation request results in ruling that enables FSC-certified bamboo building products (flooring, plywood, veneers) to be recognized within LEED Certified Wood credit

Washington, DC (PRWEB) June 3, 2009 -- The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) on April 22 ruled that Forest Stewardship Council FSC-certified bamboo plywood and flooring can now be included in calculations under Credit MRc7: Certified Wood, for projects seeking LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification.

The ruling followed a credit interpretation request (CIR) submitted by a project team who specified Smith & Fong's Plyboo® FSC-certified bamboo flooring for a multi-use project in North Carolina. After reviewing the CIR the USGBC determined the bamboo products specified for the project had been harvested and sourced by a supplier that possessed the necessary and current certifications from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and the CIR was consistent with the credit intent to, "encourage environmentally responsible forest management."

encourage environmentally responsible forest management.

We couldn't be more pleased with the USGBC's ruling

To be recognized by LEED provides the ultimate validation for all the years of work we undertook to prove the sustainability of bamboo as a building material.

The CIR review concluded that bamboo is often used in many of the same applications as wood products, and is considered by the FSC to be a forest product despite its technical classification as a grass. Going forward FSC-certified bamboo building products (flooring, plywood, veneers) will be recognized within LEED's MRc7 Credit.

"We couldn't be more pleased with the USGBC's ruling," Smith & Fong president and founder Dan Smith said. "To be recognized by LEED provides the ultimate validation for all the years of work we undertook to prove the sustainability of bamboo as a building material."

Smith & Fong received certification for its bamboo resources--the world's first non-wood product certified in accordance with the FSC's guidelines--in April 2008. The company's certified Plyboo products qualify for the FSC Pure designation, as they are 100-percent FSC material from an FSC-certified forest and have been sold and/or processed by an FSC chain-of-custody certified company. Smith & Fong's sources use no irrigation, pesticides or fertilizers in growing their bamboo.

The exact wording of the USGBC's CIR ruling can be found here: usgbc.org/LEED/Credit/CIRMain.aspx?VID=2. Access to the CIR pages requires a username and password.

Founded in 1989 and headquartered in San Francisco, Smith & Fong Co. was the first U.S. company to manufacture bamboo flooring in China for sale in North America, offering its initial product under the brand name Plyboo in 1993. In 1996 the firm began producing bamboo plywood, followed by coconut palm flooring and plywood products in 2000. Smith & Fong is committed to sustainability through innovation. For information call 866-835-9859 or visit plyboo.com.

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Smith & Fong products pass California Section 01350 emissions standards

This year Plyboo standard bamboo plywood products passed emissions testing under the criteria of California Section 01350, the most stringent volatile organic compound (VOC)-emissions standards in North America.

Smith & Fong’s entire product line already meets the California Air Resource Board (CARB)’s Phase I and Phase II regulations for formaldehyde emissions that were passed in 2007. And many of the company’s products are 100-percent urea formaldehyde-free, contributing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) points under EQ 4.4.: No Added Urea Formaldehyde.

Smith & Fong decided to test its products under Section 01350 as it strives to set a new benchmark for clean building products. Section 01350 tests for formaldehyde and more than 60 other VOCs known to be present in the manufacture of composite wood products.

“We’re very excited to have passed Section 01350,” Smith & Fong founder and president Dan Smith said. “The requirements for Section 01350 are written into California’s Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) indoor air quality program as well as LEED NC (new construction) and LEED CI (commercial interiors). But environmental health, whether indoor or outdoor, has always been a key component of our business strategy; so the validation is our reward.”

In late-2007 Smith & Fong announced plans to convert its manufacturing facilities to urea formaldehyde-free processes, and in early 2008 the company secured FSC certification for its bamboo resource—the very first FSC certification to be issued for a non-wood product.

World's first FSC-certified bamboo

Though most architects and designers recognize bamboo as one of the most perfectly sustainable products out there for green design projects, there have been more than a few skeptics and rumor-mongers on the web who have questioned the validity of its sustainability. After a few years of work convincing the European headquarters to take a look at bamboo, Smith & Fong, manufacturer of the Plyboo brand, recently announced that the company has secured FSC-certification for its bamboo resource in China, thereby laying to rest any question of the material's green-ness.

The company's news release announcing the certification can be found here. The green-design and building industry's bible, Environmental Building News broke the story in April.