Jeffree Trudeau, Founder of Bamboo Technologies/Bamboo Living Homes in Hawaii joins the WBO the position as Special Projects Director. Jeffree brings 20 plus years of active involvement in the worldwide creation of luxury bamboo homes as well as low cost bamboo construction. His experience and commitment to certification and documentation of proven bamboo information, as well as his past association with world leaders in the industry will be supportive in creating the strong presence of WBO as an effective resource to all associates worldwide in our endeavor to work together as a blanket organizational team for all existing NGO’s and government agencies currently supporting the local and international use of bamboo for the people and the planet.
PERSONAL BIO
Jeffree was born with a passion to connect to the cycles and eco-rhythms of nature. With an eye for unexplored potentials in the fields of sustainable design and construction, he greatly values grace and harmony. His father, a well known architect in New England, gave Jeffree his first construction contract at the age of 13; building an indoor/outdoor sanctuary for the family’s 2 pet rabbits, which quickly grew to 30 inhabitants. The pet friendly condominiums were just the beginning; his next teenage construction project included adding a 200 sq.ft. bedroom addition onto the family home. After finishing his first major building venture, Jeffree (at age 14) went on to design and construct tree houses throughout the entire neighborhood. With building in his bloodlines you might be able to guess what major he declared while attending college.
Jeffree graduated from RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) in 1977, receiving his Bachelors in Architecture while also studying Feng Shui as a minor. He then established a self sufficient intentional community “Griffin Gorge Commons” on 40 acres of mountainside, in up-state New York where he and his family grew organic food, produced maple syrup and raised a heard of 50 goats(30 years ago). For the next 17 years he owned and operated a health food store “Living Well Foods” and retreat center for alternative health care “The Chaleight Commons” while also designing and building homes using stone, log and earthen materials.
In 1994 he was drawn to Maui, where he established an eco-home construction company “Isle Family Builders” while synchronizing his soul with bamboo and working with his co-founder David Sands. The history of bamboo was rewritten a year later when he and David founded Bamboo Living, building the first bamboo home ever to be certified and permitted by local building officials to meet western codes. To this day he is pioneering the green movement towards sustainability and ecological balance through new technologies and construction methods using bamboo. Jeffree is working with INBAR (International Network for Bamboo and Rattan), WBO (World Bamboo Organization), NMB (National Mission for Bamboo), UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) and UNIDO(United Nations Industrial Development Organization), CBTC (Cane and Bamboo Technology Center), BMTPC (Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council), FRI (Forest Research Institute) and others to establish and refine ISO certification requirements. Both Jeffree and David are committee members working with the American Bamboo Society and World Bamboo Congress. Jeffree recently served on the organizing committee of the ICBS (International Conference on Modern Bamboo Structures) and met with representatives from 12 other countries to begin the formation of the ICCSSB (International Committee for Certification Standards of Structural Bamboo) . He has also taught international construction workshops on bamboo in the US and India, and is currently creating a program to teach building professionals and engineers how to build and finish bamboo structures worldwide. He is additionally engaged in the mission to see bamboo listed as a high preference forest product at all Climate Change Summit meetings worldwide.
“My passions in life as a practicing bamboodist stem from flexibility, accelerated growth and sustainable co-creation for all on our planet. The bamboo shoot carries these qualities and more as it rises to the skies, building its strength and cleansing the air we breathe. This sustains me, as I unveil the experience of sustainability in others. I am bamboo” – Jeffree Trudeau
