Yesterday, I wrote about the many uses of bamboo in your home with regard to design, furniture, flooring, and accessories. In my research, I was amazed to find an astounding number of ways we’re turning this prolific plant into useful and eco-friendly gadgets, tools, utensils, thingamajigs, and doodads in and outside our homes. If you were to look back at any episode of Gilligan’s Island, you would find that almost everything they built or used was made of bamboo. This “wondergrass” is just that and evokes the question: “I wonder what else I can make with this hollow jointed plant?” Below, you’ll find items made from bamboo that took hours to edit down (I found pages and pages of articles, blogs, and pictures utilizing this amazing material for anything from flooring and shelving, housing and transportation, to clothing and footwear). I thought these bamboo-made items were quite unexpected, inventive and left me green with inspiration:
Bamboo vehicles that promote alternative fuel and hybrid power.
Computers by Dell and ASUS Bamboo Series boasts higher energy efficiency, less materials used, and the use of recycled materials and packaging. They look cool, too! Items pictured from top left counterclockwise: Dell’s desktop computer wrapped in bamboo, using 71% less energy than an average laptop; ASUS Bamboo series laptop; “Bambouse”, a computer mouse designed by Wen-Ting.
Bamboo bridge in Southeast Asia.
Bamboo structures that illustrate architectural beauty and innovativeness.
“Bambike” with frame made of bamboo-light and strong. Craig Calfee, founder of Calfee Designs, discovered that because of bamboo’s vibration dampening characteristics, riders enjoy a very smooth ride. Gilligan would have LOVED to use this model for their “bike generator” (which was also used to fan Mr. and Mrs. Howell, III)!
Roof R06 Bamboo helmet with a “parquet floor” design…”Gentlemen, start your engines!”
…AND for the “G0-Green” kidos out there…
Bamboo-made toys are beginning to find it’s way to stores as big as Hammacher Schlemmer like the dollhouse above that uses solar-powered LEDs. Now that’s teaching “green” young!
