The Wonders of Hemp : Eco-Friendly Materials (Part II)

Hemp as a fuel.
Hemp is an excellent source of high quality cellulose biomass. Biomass fuels are clean and virtually free from metals and sulphur, so they do not cause nearly as much air pollution as fossil fuels. Even more importantly, burning biomass fuels does not increase the total amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. The use of biomass will reduce acid rain and reverse the greenhouse effect.

Hemp is the #1 producer of biomass per acre in the world. Biomass energy expert Lynn Osburn estimates that 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 million acres of hemp could replace all of Canada's fossil fuel demands.

The hemp plant will reach a height of up to 5m(16 feet) and sink a main tap root down 2m(6 feet). This tap root will draw nutrients from deep in the soil and make them available to subsequent crops when the hemp leaves are shed on the soil, returning up to 60% of the nutrients it takes. This extensive root system also helps to alleviate the problem of soil compaction.

The hemp paper-making process requires no dioxin-producing chlorine bleach and uses 75% to 85% less sulphur-based acid. The paper mills now in place would require little conversion in order to switch from wood to hemp pulp.

Hemp produces the strongest, most durable natural soft-fibre on earth. Hemp cloth is stronger, more durable, warmer, and more absorbent than cotton.

Hemp grown in Canada will require no herbicide or insecticide applications. Hemp fibre breathes and is recyclable, unlike petroleum-based synthetic fibres. A fully mature hemp plant may contain 1/2 of it's dry weight in seed.

Hemp seed has an oil content of 34%, more than any other seed. Hemp seed oil is second only to whale oil in quality and has the same burning qualities and viscosity as #2 grade heating oil, without any of the sulphur-based pollutants.

Building materials made from hemp can be used as a substitute for wood. These wood-like building materials are stronger than wood and can be manufactured cheaper than wood from trees. Using these hemp- derived building materials would reduce building costs and save even more trees!

Hemp was NOT banned because it was a harmful drug. Hemp was banned because it was a competitive threat to the wood products industry and newly developed synthetic fibers that were patentable, and therefore more profitable than hemp. Corporations that profited from the demise of hemp propagated a smear campaign against hemp by claiming that marijuana use was a major drug problem (it was not) and that marijuana use caused people to become extremely violent-- another falsehood. Unfortunately, these false claims went unchallenged and hemp was outlawed in 1938.

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The Wonders of Hemp : Eco-Friendly Materials

As bloggers we often encounter to read some blogs about products made from hemp, like shoes, bags, food, oil and etc. But have we really understand what is hemp is all about? How does it looks like? Why they are so popular nowadays and noted as eco-friendly, environment-friendly, and or green products? So check out below some of the basic information:

Hemp is a variation of cannabis sativa. It is the most useful plant known to man kind. In fact, cannabis sativa means useful(sativa) hemp(cannabis). It is used to make over 25,000 different products, most of which are superior alternatives to less environmentally friendly products.

Hemp normally requires very little fertilizer, and grows well almost anywhere. It is also pest resistant, so it uses no pesticides. Hemp puts down deep roots, which is very good for the soil, and when the leaves drop off the hemp plant, minerals and nitrogen are returned to the soil. Hemp has been known to grow on the same soil for twenty years in a row without any noticeable soil depletion. Using less fertilizer and pesticides is good for two reasons. First, it costs less and requires less effort. Second, many agricultural chemicals are dangerous and harmful to the environment -- the less we have to use, the better.

Why is hemp better for paper?

Tree paper requires many chemicals to produce quality paper, which are extremely hard on the environment. Paper can be made from hemp without the use of these harmful chemicals. Tree paper yellows and falls apart in a matter of decades, while hemp paper can last for centuries. Hemp paper has been found dating back 1500 years. One acre of hemp can produce as much paper as four acres of trees. Hemp paper is suitable for recycle use 7 or 8 times, compared to 3 times for tree paper. Trees must grow for 20 to 50 years before they can be harvested for commercial use. Hemp requires a growing season of only 100 days! By using hemp for paper,we could stop the deforestation of our country and produce stronger, more environmentally sound paper for less than half the cost of tree paper. Millions of acres of forest and wildlife habitat could be preserved.

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to be continued...

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9 Easy Tips To Save Mother Earth

Here are a few tips from David de Rothschild that can help people save money as well as be environmentally friendly:

Replace a Lightbulb
If one million homes replaced four of their traditional incandescent bulbs with Energy-Star approved compact fluorescent bulbs (the ones that look like soft-serve ice cream cones), 900,000 tons of greenhouse gasses would be eliminated, and people would save approximately $30 to $50 dollars in electricity over the life of the bulb for each bulb they replace.

Kill Phantom Power
Even when most household appliances are turned off, their standby modes continue to suck power that wastes electricity and increases your electric bill. The worst offenders are cell phone chargers, where only 5% of the power they draw is used to charge your phone, while the other 95% is wasted when left plugged in. What to do? Unplug your cell phone charger when you aren't using it, and plug all of your big appliances (especially TV's and home entertainment equipment) into an easy-to-reach power strip that you can turn off when you aren't using them.

TV's and VCR's in standby mode waste an estimated $1 billion dollars in electricity each year, but if one million households halved their phantom power load, we'd eliminate 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Put On a Sweater
By lowering your thermostat by just 2 degrees in the winter, you'll save up to 4% on your energy bill, and prevent 500 lbs. of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. Plus, as David writes, the more people who wear sweaters, the happier Jimmy Carter will be.

Paper or Plastic? Neither!
We've long been told to ask for paper instead of plastic bags at the grocery store, but the truth is, although paper bags are biodegradable, the waste of resources used to produce them makes paper almost as big a drain on the environment as plastic bags are. What to do? While paper is still preferable to plastic, the best option is to bring your own reusable bags to the grocery store, be they canvas or nylon or hemp, and skip paper or plastic altogether.

Lobby Your Hotel
In a given year, a single hotel room uses more than 80,000 gallons of water and generates 5 tons of garbage. Given that there are approximately 3.3 million hotel rooms in the U.S., hotels generate a lot of waste, and that's not even counting the near-continual use of air conditioning in every room. How do we do our part? Many hotels now offer guests the option to use one set of linens and towels during their stay. If one million people used just one set of linens for a week, it would save 1.5 million gallons of water.

Build a Straw Home
Building a home using straw insulation instead of traditional building materials will cut heating and cooling costs, reducing your energy usage by two-thirds. If one million households halved their gas-heating bill, 2.75 million tons of carbon dioxide would be eliminated per year.

Harvest the Sun
If one million homes installed solar panels on their roof and switched to solar power, we could reduce C02 emissions by 4.3 million tons a year. Currently, it is an expensive investment, costing over $20,000 to install solar panels on the roof of your home. However, homeowners can save potentially hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year in electricity costs; most people will still be connected to the power grid, and will simply use the traditional electricity as auxiliary power.

Install a Windmill
If 100,000 homes installed and relied on wind power, C02 production could be reduced by 900,000 tons. The cost of installing a wind turbine starts at $7,000, and an average wind speed of 10mph is required to generate an adequate amount of power.

Drive a Frybrid
For between $500 and $1000, you can convert the engine your old Mercedes diesel sedan to run on used french-fry grease (aka vegetable oil). According to David, more than one million gallons of fuel could be made from waste vegetable oil collected from restaurants in San Francisco alone.

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