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Bamboo buyer beware, says Kelly LaPlante. "This is one of the biggest areas for greenwashing," she told CNET News.com during a tour of a suite she redesigned on behalf of Lexus at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel.
As part of a marketing campaign, Lexus is sprucing up hotel suites in San Francisco and Washington, DC. The Fairmont may be pricey at $869 (£436) a night, but you get to use a Lexus hybrid V8 while you're there.
A lot of companies offer bamboo flooring and panel so they can sell a green product, but many of them also use toxic adhesives and other chemicals that cancel out the advantages of using bamboo. It grows fast and needs little fertiliser, making it a relatively green building product.
Some companies also grow it in far-flung places and truck it in, eliminating further environmental advantages, so you've got to dig into the suppliers to figure out if you're buying green. Later this year, LaPlante, a self-described 'organic' interior designer, will set up a site that rates various building suppliers on how green they really are. It should be good reading.
Even if you don't know about the sourcing of green materials like bamboo, she says there are other elements you can control when you're bringing green design into your home. One great tip is to recycle as much as possible -- in the remodelling process. LaPlante recently remodelled three cottages in Venice, California, and her team reused so much drywall and other materials that they didn't even need a skip out front.
"When you demolish something, are you demolishing or carefully removing?" she asks. When LaPlante worked on the Lexus promotion at the Fairmont she designed a footstool/table that was covered in bits of leather from old Lexus interiors, a perfect example of 'designer' recycling.
But she warns about going too far with eco-friendly designs. "We try to make things that don't look like green design," she says, since self-conscious green design will likely look dated in the future. You can consciously pick green materials, she says, but it shouldn't be a theme.
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