Keen cyclists will be able to further their green credentials on a bicycle made from bamboo.

For a mere £3,000, customers at Chiswick’s Eco Age store – which is owned by actor Colin Firth’s wife and brother-in-law – can buy the organic, biodegradable cycle.

The bike’s frame is made from bamboo stems, plucked from the remote mountains of Taiwan’s Yushan National Park, home to the rock monkey and Formosan black bear, before being shipped to California.

Here the bikes are smoked and heat-treated before being assembled into a frame by Craig Calfee, the founder of Calfee Design, who has been building bike frames from bamboo since 1995.

Each bike is specifically designed for the height and weight of the rider and comes in either a mountain bike or racing bike style.

Chief executive Nicola Giuggioli of Eco Age said: “This bike is yet another example, if we still need it, of how nature already produce materials that have better performances and quality than the ones we have been developing over the last few decades; when will we learn that instead of processing minerals, chemicals and fossil fuels at incredibly high temperatures we only have to follow the examples that are in front of us every day?

“Expensive as a bike? Yes it is, but steel and carbon fibre bikes where not cheaper when they first came out on the market.”

Unlike normal metal bikes, the bamboo does not rust, meaning all that is needed for a peaceful ride is to preserve it properly and coat it with a waterproof sealer.

Bamboo has been used throughout history for everything from musical instruments to medicine and its combination of strength and flexibility makes it an ideal choice for building bikes.

The plant itself has an impressively high green rating, absorbing five times as much greenhouse gas as a conventional tree plantation.

The bike is sold exclusively at Eco-Age in High Road, Chiswick.