Plyboo
Smith & Fong was founded in 1989 out of a truly passionate affinity for bamboo and with an overarching philosophy of sustainability. The firm began as a producer of bamboo accessories and within four years became the first U.S. company to produce bamboo flooring for the North American market.
Smith & Fong’s Plyboo flooring, plywood and veneer are derived from Moso bamboo harvested from a forest that requires no irrigation, fertilizers or pesticides. Each year, only 20 percent of the plantation’s bamboo–or only the five-year growth–is cut, ensuring the forest canopy remains intact and the ecosystem is not disturbed.
The company works closely with its bamboo farmers and its two manufacturing facilities to ensure quality and peerless environmental practices.
In 2007 Smith & Fong announced it would be converting its manufacturing operations to run urea formaldehyde-free adhesives (PlybooPure™) on its plywood, flooring and veneer lines. Both the Plyboo and Durapalm product lines are now available UF-free throughout North America. All Smith & Fong products undergo independent lab-testing for emissions compliance.
Smith & Fong products pass the California Air Resources Board (CARB)’s groundbreaking formaldehyde regulations for composite panels. And all standard PlybooPure sheet goods have passed California’s Section 01350 VOC-emissions testing-the strictest indoor air quality criteria in existence. Many Smith & Fong products earn the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Credit EQ 4.4: No Added Urea Formaldehyde.
In 2008 Smith & Fong obtained the world’s first non-wood FSC certification for its bamboo resource in China, providing third-party validation of a truly sustainable industry. Later that year PlybooPure FSC-certified bamboo flooring was selected as a “Top-10 Green Building Product” by BuildingGreen, publisher of Environmental Building News, the architecture and design industry’s most respected source of information on sustainable building and design.
Bamboo has captivated designers, craftsmen and innovators for millennia. It is beautiful, enduring, light and rapidly renewable. For thousands of years, bamboo has been used where strength and flexibility are essential: in buildings, musical instruments, fuel, food fiber, and as a renewable material for furniture. Bamboo produces greater biomass, and 30% more oxygen than a hardwood forest of the same size, while improving watersheds, preventing erosion, and removing toxins from contaminated soil. Unlike most forestry, proper harvesting does not kill the bamboo plant, so topsoil is held in place. Bamboo poles are two to three times stronger than comparable wood timber. Bamboo can be harvested in seven years versus ten to fifty years for softwoods and hardwoods. It yields up to twenty times more material than wood. One bamboo clump can produce 200 poles in the five years it takes one tree to reach maturity. Bamboo can be sustainably harvested and replenished with little impact to the environment.