Bamboo, in recent years, has become a trend so widespread that prices have gone up and the grass-as-industrial-raw-material has found its way into bowls, utensils, flooring, furniture, counter tops, rugs, and any number of other goods on the market. Such popularity owes itself mostly to the perception that bamboo is a sustainably harvestable crop with environmentally-friendly processing practices. An article in Slate this morning, however, charges that there's more to bamboo harvesting and processing than meets the eye, challenging the notion that it's automatically the greenest flooring material available. I'm curious, now, whether such manufacturing concerns exist in non-flooring applications as well.