Totally Bamboo Cutting Board is on the cutting edge of the Green Revolution

Browse a wide selection of bamboo blinds, mats, furniture, kitchen ware, office equipment, seeds and lucky bamboo at The Bamboo Shop.

Bamboo is an amazing thing. Contrary to popular opinion it is not a wood, it is a grass; and yet bamboo is a very strong material. You can use bamboo to construct houses. Bamboo is sometimes used instead of iron in concrete construction. You can make solid furniture from bamboo. The world is sadly still addicted to using hardwoods for making furniture and other household objects, yet bamboo is 16% stronger than maple. A hardwood takes on average 40 to 50 years to mature. It seems a shame to chop down mighty hardwood trees for our needs. Forests and jungles are the lungs of the world. They take so long to get established and yet can be wiped out in a matter of weeks. One and a half acres of rainforest is lost every second! What can we do to stop this nose spin into a forest-less, oxygen starved world? Plastics are not the answer - plastic is made from petroleum and is a nuisance to dispose of. The answer could well be a grass called bamboo.

Bamboo reaches maturity in 4 to 5 years. It is the fastest growing plant on the planet. One species grows an incredible 60cms or 24inches in a single day. If you stopped to stare you could actually see it grow. And that is not all. Bamboo doesn't have to be planted because it grows an extensive root system that puts up new shoots. This extensive root system holds the top soil together and stops soil erosion and, in Japan, helps prevent landslides during earthquakes. And there's more: bamboo contains a 'kun' substance that fights pests and pathogens which means bamboo can be grown organically. Bamboo is an awesome way to clean the soil and the air. A clump of bamboo produces more oxygen then the equivalent in space of a stand of trees. Bamboo was planted after the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima to clean the soil. And there's even more: bamboo shoots are a great source of nutrition and bamboo is used in traditional Indian and Chinese medicine.

One easy way you can start to take advantage of the eco-credentials of bamboo is to replace your old kitchen cutting board not with another board made of hardwood, but instead, to buy a chopping board made from bamboo. The best bamboo cutting board I have found on the market is the Totally Bamboo Congo Parquet End Grain Cutting Board. This cutting board is made from Chinese 'moso' bamboo which is NOT the food or habitat for the Giant Panda. Totally Bamboo has a fair trade program to make sure the Chinese farmers are fairly paid for their efforts.

The Totally Bamboo Congo Parquet End Grain Cutting Board has an attractive parquet design created by laying strips of end grain bamboo in alternating directions. The deep honey color is created by an oven-process that caramelizes the natural sugars in the bamboo. Furthermore, the Totally Bamboo chopping board doesn't use any glue with formaldehyde.

The chopping board dimensions are a generous 17-1/4-by-13-3/4-by-1-inch or 43.8-by-34.9-by-2.5cms. It is suitable for cutting vegetables or meat. Because bamboo is so hard it doesn't blunt your knives and doesn't look all 'cut up' after heavy use. Bamboo is very water resistant so it is perfect for cleaning and for not allowing the flavor of the food you are cutting to seep into the board. To wash just rinse in soap and water; and occasionally wipe with mineral oil. The Totally Bamboo Congo Parquet End Grain Cutting Board costs $38.95 and if cared for properly will last a life-time. What better way to get on the cutting edge of the eco-revolution. Buy it for yourself or a friend and help to reverse the trend of deforestation.

If you like this idea then read my other hubs about how to reduce your shower water consumption by half and how to save money and be more environmentally friendly by using a hemp reusable cone coffee filter.