With all the interest in environmental friendliness and making a smaller carbon footprint, bamboo continues to be one of the more popular niche products. As an alternative flooring “where the grass is greener” environmentally speaking, producers are doing what they can to ensure buyers, specifiers and sellers are aware of the category’s eco, performance and styling benefits.

“Bamboo is rapidly renewable,” said Gary Keeble Jr., marketing manager for USFloors. “Bamboo suitable for flooring matures in less than six years, whereas woods with comparable hardness mature in 50 to 150 years.”

Bamboo is rapidly renewable because it is actually a grass that grows up to 2 feet daily. Another environmental benefit is that bamboo helps relieve pressure on degraded forests, releasing 35% more oxygen than a comparable cluster of trees.

Being eco friendly is one thing, but flooring needs to stand up to the daily abuse it takes. Despite being a grass, bamboo has always been known as a very strong material, and technological advances have made it even tougher.

Strand-woven is bamboo’s fastest growing development. Strand woven is much denser, making it a harder product and therefore specifically suitable for high traffic applications. “Standard bamboo products average 1,400 on the Janka hardness scale,” said Piet Dossche, CEO of USFloors, “while strand woven averages about 2,800.”

Roger Farabee, Mohawk Industries’ senior vice president of marketing, said the mill’s strand woven bamboo styles “have been tested to be twice as hard as domestic oak, making them applicable for both residential and commercial applications. Plus, our products are manufactured using all parts of the bamboo stalk for optimum green benefits.”

When it comes to recent regulations such as the Lacey Act and California’s CARB, reputable companies point out their bamboo floors have been complying with these laws before they were put on the books.

Along with complying with these laws Keeble said the company’s bamboo floors are certified under the GreenGuard Children & Schools rating—the country’s most stringent IAQ standard.

While it has many eco-friendly attributes, not all bamboo flooring is created equally.

“In order to ensure a beautiful, durable, renewable product,” noted Ann Knight, executive vice president/global brand director for Teragren “it’s important to know where, and especially when, the bamboo was harvested, which specie was used, its Janka hardness, adhesive/formaldehyde off-gassing ratings, and if it is coming from a reputable manufacturer and is truly environmentally friendly.