Bamboo Plates!

We love these bamboo plates!! We were so excited when we sourced these - they showcase some amazing Aboriginal designs and they are environmentally friendly!

Each plate is packaged as a set of 4 and there are 8 different designs to choose from. Some colourful contemporary designs through to Colleen Wallace's more traditional, dot work design featuring her Dreamtime Sisters story.

These plates will look so fantastic for a dinner party set up (we'll post photos once we've held one at our place!) Or you can use them for your everyday family dinners, they will make an ordinary dinner very colourful. And they're made from bamboo so no more worrying about porcelain plates smashing when they're knocked from the table..

Before we got sold on this whole bamboo and it's impact on the environment we decided to do a little more digging into the biodegradability of it.. And we're happy to pass on what we have found...(see note)

The main reason we think of bamboo products as environmentally friendly is due to the fact that bamboo is so easy and quick to grow. This means that it can be harvested sooner than other materials and will regrow quickly for the next harvest, therefore using less of the worlds natural resources.

The next reason is due to the fact that bamboo is biodegradable. That means that instead of throwing it in the garbage when it's through (and filling up our waste facilities in the process), you can dig a hole in the garden, bury it and it will break down of it's own accord. Sounds too good to be true? Well, it's not quite as perfect as that unfortunately. Because bamboo fibre on it's own wouldn't hold it's shape it has to be mixed with something to help it bond. For the majority of bamboo products on the market at the moment, this mixer is melamine. You've probably all heard of melamine before - it is a chemical compound that when mixed with formaldehyde produces a hard, durable plastic like material. So most bamboo products are made from a mix of about 50% bamboo fibre, 30% cornflour and 20% melamine. These percentages may differ slightly but never by much. There are different grades of melamine and we endeavoured to find a company that uses high-quality, food-grade safe, melamine.

So this raises the important question: can we still bury these products at the end of their shelf-life? From the internet research we have conducted, the answer is yes. Although parts of the bamboo plates will not biodegrade, the majority will (80%) and that is a huge relief for our landfills. It suggested to find a place to bury them where you don't intend to grow any edible plants.

More good news with these plates is that the colouring needed to represent the artwork is achieved using natural, food grade dyes. So you can rest assured that the majority of these plates are made from biodegradable materials and will make a positive impact on the environment with their use. And you can clean them in the dishwasher!

We hope you love these bamboo plates like we do and we look forward to finding you more products like these to add to our range!

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(Note: Any opinions expressed in this blog are just that - opinions of the author conducted from their own internet research. No scientific experiments have been undertaken by us to prove these opinions.)