Plyboo is committed to responsible and respectful management of the land where bamboo grows and to ethical treatment of those who work the land.

Plyboo® FSC Certificate

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification confirms that a forest is being managed to preserve biological diversity while benefiting the lives of local people and workers, all the while ensuring economic viability. Plyboo® was the first company to provide FSC bamboo to consumers.

Plyboo invests significant time and resources in achieving and maintaining its FSC certification. Each step in the manufacturing process is checked and verified on a regular basis. And our chain of custody from manufacturer to customer remains intact and verifiable.

This is considered important for several important reasons related to environmental, social, and economic sustainability:

1. Promotes Responsible Forest Management

FSC certification ensures that certified forests are managed in a way that promotes biodiversity, sustains ecological health, and maintains long-term viability. It prevents over-harvesting, illegal logging, and habitat destruction.

2. Protects Indigenous Rights and Local Communities

FSC certification requires that forest managers respect and protect the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. This ensures that indigenous people and local communities have a say in the management of the forests they depend on, and protects their access to resources, helping to avoid conflicts or exploitation.

3. Prevents Deforestation

By encouraging sustainable practices, FSC helps to combat deforestation. This helps maintain carbon sinks (forests that absorb CO2), contributing to climate change mitigation.

4. Promotes Biodiversity

FSC-certified forests must protect endangered species, ecosystems, and high-conservation-value areas. By maintaining these environments, FSC certification helps to preserve biodiversity and prevent habitat loss.

5. Encourages Ethical Labor Practices

FSC standards also promote fair labor conditions, including safe working environments, fair wages, and prohibiting forced or child labor in all operations, while also maintaining good community relations. This focus on the social impact of forestry management supports social equity within the forestry industry.

6. Consumer Confidence and Transparency

FSC audit results must be published, including for private forestry lands. This transparency provides consumers with the assurance that the wood or paper products they are purchasing come from forests responsibly managed with sustainable practices. This transparency builds consumer trust and encourages more sustainable purchasing behavior while encouraging businesses to engage in responsible forestry management practices.

7. Supports Economic Viability

Sustainable forest management under FSC standards helps create long-term economic benefits by ensuring that forests remain healthy and productive for future generations, balancing economic viability and growth with ecological and social responsibility.

In summary, by monitoring the environmental and social impacts of forest management, the FSC certification plays a key role in promoting sustainability, protecting ecosystems, ensuring ethical labor practices, and empowering consumers to make environmentally responsible choices.

Plyboo® EPD — Bamboo Plywood | Plyboo® EPD — Carved Bamboo Plywood

An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is an independently verified document that provides information about the environmental impacts of products throughout its entire life cycle. This is beneficial for several reasons, particularly for promoting transparency, sustainability, and informed decision-making:

1. Transparency in Environmental Impact
An EPD provides a standardized, third-party verified summary of a product’s environmental impact throughout its lifecycle—from raw material extraction to disposal. This enables consumers, businesses, and governments to understand the ecological footprint of the products they use.

2. Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) — Plyboo® LCA — Bamboo Plywood | Plyboo® LCA — Carved Bamboo Plywood
EPDs are based on comprehensive Lifecycle Assessments (LCA), which evaluate a product’s environmental impacts across its entire life, including:

• Energy use
• Resource depletion
• Water usage
• Waste generation
• Greenhouse gas emissions

This helps in identifying which stages of a product’s life cycle have the highest environmental impact, allowing for more informed decisions.

3. Supports Sustainable Purchasing
EPDs enable consumers, architects, builders, and companies to compare the environmental impact of products and select the most sustainable options. This promotes greener procurement choices in industries like construction, manufacturing, and retail.

4. Encourages Eco-Friendly Innovation
The transparency and detailed reporting of EPDs incentivize companies to innovate and reduce the environmental impact of their products. When competitors are compared based on their EPDs, there’s a clear incentive to improve environmental performance.

5. Third-Party Verification
EPDs are independently verified by accredited third parties to ensure accuracy and reliability. This external validation adds credibility and trust for consumers and stakeholders, ensuring that companies are held accountable for their environmental claims.

6. Aligns with Green Building Standards
Many green building certification systems (such as LEED and BREEAM) recognize and reward the use of products with EPDs. This makes EPDs valuable for projects aiming to meet high sustainability standards, reducing the overall environmental impact of a building.

7. Promotes Environmental Responsibility
By providing clear information on a product’s impact, EPDs encourage businesses to take responsibility for their environmental footprint. This contributes to overall industry efforts to reduce pollution, conserve resources, and mitigate climate change.

8. Meets Regulatory and Market Demands
Increasingly, governments and industries are mandating the use of EPDs in various sectors, especially in construction. They are becoming essential for meeting regulatory requirements and gaining market access, especially in regions with strong sustainability policies.

In summary, EPDs provide a credible, comprehensive way to assess and communicate the environmental performance of products, driving both market and regulatory shifts toward sustainability.

Plyboo® HPD

A Healthy Product Declaration (HPD) is a standardized and publicly disclosed document that provides transparency into the potential health impacts of building products. This is beneficial because it promotes safety and sustainability in building materials and consumer products by focusing on the health impacts of the materials used.

Here’s why an HPD is considered valuable:

1. Promotes Transparency in Material Health
An HPD provides detailed information about the chemical ingredients in a product and their potential health impacts. This transparency allows consumers, designers, architects, and contractors to make informed purchasing decisions based on an understanding of exactly what is in a product and how it may affect human health.

2. Protects Human Health
By disclosing the presence of potentially harmful substances, an HPD helps identify materials that could pose health risks, such as carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, or toxins. This helps in selecting safer products, thereby improving the built environment and indoor air quality while reducing exposure to hazardous chemicals.

3. Supports Safer Building and Living Environments
HPDs contribute to healthier indoor environments, especially in buildings, by helping designers and builders choose materials that are free from harmful chemicals. This is particularly important in spaces like homes, schools, and hospitals, where air quality has a direct impact on occupant health.

4. Encourages Sustainable and Healthy Product Design
When manufacturers provide HPDs, they are encouraged to develop products that avoid toxic substances. By voluntarily disclosing product contents, companies are incentivized to innovate and reformulate products to make them safer and healthier for both consumers and the environment.

5. Helps Meet Green Building Certifications
HPDs are recognized by green building certification systems such as LEED and WELL, which reward the use of healthy, non-toxic materials. Projects aiming to achieve these certifications often require the use of products with HPDs, which support healthier, more sustainable building practices.

6. Informed Decision-Making
Architects, designers, and consumers can make more informed decisions based on the data provided in an HPD. This level of detail allows for comparisons between products, helping to select materials that align with health and sustainability goals.

7. Third-Party Verification
HPDs can be third-party verified to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. This provides additional trust for consumers and professionals who want assurance that the product’s health impact claims are valid.

8. Reduces Regulatory Risk
As health and safety regulations around chemical use in products evolve, having an HPD helps companies stay compliant by proactively disclosing potential hazards and reducing the risk of regulatory issues down the line.

9. Aligns with Corporate Social Responsibility
By using HPDs, companies demonstrate a commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR), showing that they prioritize human health and environmental stewardship. This can enhance a company’s reputation and appeal to health-conscious consumers.

10. Supports the Circular Economy
HPDs encourage the use of safer, healthier materials that are easier to recycle or repurpose, promoting the circular economy. The HPD complements other sustainability tools in green building design and helps reduce waste and environmental damage associated with the manufacturing, use, and ultimate disposal of toxic materials.

In summary, HPDs are a powerful tool for promoting healthier products, fostering transparency in ingredient disclosure, and supporting safer and more sustainable building environments. They help protect human health while driving innovation and environmental responsibility in the manufacturing process.

Request Plyboo® CARB 01350 Testing

In 2004 California adopted the nation’s first standard for testing building materials for chemical emissions. This standard, known as the CARB Section 01350 specification, was established by the California Air Resources Board and requires independently verified testing for compliance with a rigorous set of indoor air quality standards and guidelines for evaluating emissions from building materials, specifically focusing on volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

The CARB 01350 specification remains the most stringent standard applicable to construction products in the US, more stringent for example than a comparable standard adopted by the U.S. EPA under the Title VI of the Toxic Substances Control Act for formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products.

CARB Sec. 01350 is part of the California Code of Regulations, Title 24, and is commonly associated with the requirements established by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) in their Standard Method for the Testing and Evaluation of Volatile Organic Chemical Emissions from Indoor Sources Using Environmental Chambers, Version 1.2 (often abbreviated as CDPH Standard Method v1.2).

Key Features of Section 01350 Testing:

1. Purpose: Section 01350 aims to ensure that materials used in buildings, such as flooring, insulation, adhesives, sealants, and other construction products, do not emit harmful levels of VOCs, which could negatively impact indoor air quality and human health.
2. Testing Process:
   • Products are placed in environmental chambers that simulate indoor environments.
   • VOC emissions are measured over time, typically over a 14-day period.
   • The test measures the concentration of various specified chemicals, such as formaldehyde, benzene, and other VOCs, that are released from the material.
   • Results are compared against health-based indoor air quality standards to determine if a product is compliant.
3. Health Impact Focus: The standard prioritizes the protection of occupants from exposure to harmful chemicals that may cause short- or long-term health effects such as headaches, respiratory problems, or more serious conditions like cancer, especially in sensitive populations (e.g., children or the elderly).
4. Compliance and Certification: Products that pass CARB Section 01350 testing are considered low-emitting and are often labeled or certified for use in projects seeking LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, WELL Building Standards, or other green building certifications. Passing this test is critical for materials to be approved for use in California, which has some of the strictest air quality regulations in the U.S. (Plyboo PASSES 1350 Link)
5. Scope of Use: Section 01350 is widely used in California but also adopted in other regions as a standard and by various green building certification programs due to its rigorous standards for evaluating product emissions.

Importance of CARB Section 01350:

• Indoor Air Quality: It helps to ensure that buildings, particularly schools and commercial spaces, are constructed with materials that do not compromise indoor air quality.
• Health and Safety: Reducing exposure to VOCs and other harmful chemicals is crucial for the well-being of building occupants.
• Sustainability: Products meeting Section 01350 standards often contribute to the overall sustainability of a building, helping reduce environmental impact and enhance occupant comfort.

In summary, CARB Section 01350 is a critical testing method for ensuring that construction materials are safe for indoor use, helping to protect public health and meet stringent environmental standards in California and beyond.