Industrial hemp is a versatile and sustainable resource that has been used for thousands of years to make paper, ropes, fabrics, and fuel. It is lighter and less expensive to process than wood, and an acre of hemp planted over 40 years has 400% more usable fiber than an acre of trees over its 40-year life cycle. Hemp can help save trees by replacing wood pulp with hemp pulp, and it can also be used as a wood alternative for floors and panels. Hemp is a weed, so it grows prolifically with little water and no pesticides.
It takes up relatively little space, produces more pulp per acre than trees, and is biodegradable. Hemp crops even return nutrients to the soil and sequester carbon dioxide. Hemp improves soil inclination, requires no insecticides or herbicides, and leaves the field free of weeds for the next harvest. If the paper comes from fibers such as hemp, it will have minimal pulp and papermaking emissions.
Trees take a long time to grow, which is why they are cut down faster than we can replace them. On average, trees are 10 to 30 years old before being used as paper.
Hemp
, on the other hand, takes 60 to 90 days to reach maturity. Basically, hemp is ready to be harvested and turned into paper after one season.Surprisingly, the world's first paper was made from hemp. Speaking of pollution, replacing trees with hemp is environmentally friendly for another reason. Forests need enormous tracts of land, which are difficult to find at best. The logging process accelerates the erosion of the topsoil, which contaminates rivers, streams and lakes.
On the contrary, hemp can be cultivated on small amounts of land, eliminating the need for logging and drastically reducing erosion and subsequent pollution. Hemp not only replenishes the soil and cleans the air, but it's also great at eliminating harmful toxins from the environment by absorbing them. Hemp doesn't attract weed growth; instead, it automatically repels weed growth and is inflated by very few insects. Hemp has evolved to confuse more than 25,000 products, including food, wellness products, cosmetics, clothing, construction, biofuels, and more. Hemp fiber is ten times stronger than cotton and is suitable for making any normal clothing. Hemp requires very little or moderate fertilizer and therefore doesn't damage the soil as much as cotton and other plants.
They consider hemp to be better for making paper but they can learn from kenaf until its cultivation in the United States becomes legal again.
