TruBamboo is going plastic.
The company, which has produced cutting boards and other kitchen items from bamboo since 2003, is now adding a high density polyethylene cutting board line to its product mix to help it compete in the marketplace.
“Everyone out there is doing bamboo products now,” said Brittni Stallings, public relations director for the Boynton Beach, Fla.-based company. “We were seeing that the marketplace was bypassing us.”
Major retailers want to deal with a limited number of suppliers, and if one of TruBamboo's competitors can deliver both bamboo and plastic, the company could miss out on that business.
So TruBamboo's HDPE boards are being sold under the Solid Green label, which will allow it to continue to find shelf space on stores, Stallings said at the International Home + Housewares show, held March 14-16 in Chicago. It began introducing the boards early this year, and will have them fully on the market during the summer.
HDPE makes the most environmental sense because it is the easiest plastic to recycle in existing community programs, Stallings said. Each Solid Green board bears a molded-in imprint asking consumers to recycle it at the end of its life. The company is working with two molders in China to produce the boards.
The firm even calls its Sold Green products “the future of TruBamboo as a company” because it signifies the company is not restrained to only bamboo products.
The company is far from giving up on bamboo, however. It claims it makes up 25 percent of the bamboo housewares market and this year also introduced a folding bamboo banana holder that stores away when it's not in use.
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