Hemp, in addition to the economic and social ones, has enormous environmental benefits. It is an inexhaustible source of renewable energy, it reduces pollution, restores the air and the land where it is grown, and is a resource on which we can build a more eco-sustainable society.
It absorbs CO2 and cleans the air
According to a recent New York study, hemp, within its fibers, can permanently absorb greenhouse gases contained in the atmosphere. It has been found that just one acre of cannabis plants (2500 m2) can store up to 3 tons of carbon, removing more than 7 from the atmosphere and significantly reducing climate-altering emissions.
Furthermore, hemp captures up to 4 times the CO2 stored by trees. A property that maintains even when used in the construction field. In fact, it is estimated that, while traditional construction accounts for 30/40% of CO2 emissions, the production of hemp and lime is carbon negative: that is, it removes more CO2 from the environment than would be emitted by processing it.
Finally, unlike traditional cement which, in Europe alone, is linked to a third of the total waste produced, hemp bio-bricks are biodegradable and perfectly recyclable.
Limit your consumption of water and pesticides
Cotton, given its natural characteristics which make it particularly versatile, is the most used material in the fashion industry. At the same time, however, its cultivation requires a excessive use of water resources and pesticides, which classify it among the most polluting crops on the planet.
Hemp, among its infinite uses, could replace cotton and create an equally valid textile supply chain, if not more so, and highly sustainable. In fact, hemp fiber is longer, more absorbent, resistant and insulating than cotton fiber and its cultivation requires a use limited water (about half that of cotton) and of zero pesticides, pesticides and herbicides.
Purifies the soil
As stated by the recent scientific study published by Elsevir, hemp boasts important qualities of phytoremediation and “can clean up the polluted lands" where it is grown.
Hemp can in fact store polluting components such as heavy metals, limiting its accumulation to the underground part, i.e. to its roots, so that the upper part composed of stem and seeds can equally be used for purposes linked exclusively to the industrial and non-food sector.
Once absorbed, the substances are o metabolized and transformed according to a process called "phytometabolization" or stored, "phytodeposit", or even recovered, "phytoextraction", as often happens with lead, zinc and iron.
Finally, hemp has already been widely used for its phytoremediation skills, starting from Chernobyl in Ukraine, victim of the nuclear disaster that struck it in 1986, for the areas devastated by mining in Guateng in South Africa, up to in Italy for the polluted lands of Campania, of Porto Marghera in the Veneto, in Puglia and in the abandoned mining areas of Sulcis Iglesiente in Sardinia.
Save the forests
Nowadays, they are three reasons main reasons why many forests are razed to the ground:
- to make room for intensive farming and for the cultivation of cereals necessary to feed the same animals condemned to certain death;
- for the production of wood used for heating and cooking, especially in less industrialized countries;
- for paper production;
Here, hemp could contribute, sometimes partially, sometimes completely, to put a definitive point to this tradition that is so harmful to the Earth and to all the species that inhabit it, including us human beings.
Starting from the first point, i hemp seeds they are a natural and genuine food, rich in fiber and essential fatty acids but also in vitamins and mineral salts, which, unlike most foods of plant origin, are rich in proteins that contain all 8 essential amino acids fundamental for protein synthesis.
So a food source much healthier than meat which, in a vegetarian, vegan, rather than omnivorous diet, would occupy a place of honor.
Moving on to the second point, it is possible to obtain a material very similar to hemp wood, but much more resistant, economical and above all ecological. Which has proven to be perfect for our needs, without the need to perpetually destroy forests that took millennia to form.
Finally, given the enormous production of cellulose and the low percentage of lignin, one is also obtained from hemp superior quality paper compared to that obtained from trees. Hemp can also produce three to four times more fiber per hectare. Fiber and wood already white in color from which paper is obtained already printable, without the use of highly harmful chemical compounds used to whiten and treat wood fiber paper.
It is an inexhaustible source of renewable energy
To top it off, hemp is an inexhaustible source of biomass energy, perfect for reduce our attachment to fossil energy. In fact, from hemp, as he already guessed Henry Ford with his Hemp Body Car, green fuels with zero impact on the environment can be obtained such as: bio-diesel and hemp bio-ethanol.
Same thing for plastic. From the report on “Fate of plastic waste in the EU” of the European Environment Agency, we read: “The annual global production of plastic has grown significantly in recent decades, doubling between 2000 and 2019 to reach 460 million tons, and seems destined to triple between now and 2060. Even more disheartening figures if we think that only 9% of the world's plastic is recycled.
The hemp bio-plastic it is a natural, economical and qualitatively better alternative to petroleum-based plastic. Recent studies have in fact found that hemp bio-plastic is 5 times more rigid than polypropylene and 2.5 times more resistant.
More importantly, unlike traditional plastic which takes 10 to 30 years to degrade, hemp bio-plastic bio-degrades within 3-6 months and, as it is not produced with fossil fuels, it does not emit CO2 during its decomposition.
