Hemp Houses Have Negative Carbon Footprint

[grace]

With recent research coming out of the UK that shows that houses made of hemp can actually leave a less than zero carbon footprint, it’s truly a shame that industrialized hemp is still illegal in the US.

 

The hemp homes used in the study were built using Hemp-lime, a lightweight composite building material made of hemp fibers which are bound together by a lime-based glue.

 

Since the plant stores carbon during while it grows, the lime has a very low carbon footprint, and the material has excellent insulating properties, the product actually has a combined footprint that’s actually “better than zero carbon.”

 

British homes will start being built with the material as soon as possible as soon as final testing is completed by a consortium out of the University of Bath.

 

It is truly bizarre that the US still maintains law against using industrialized hemp. The US continues to fail to make a distinction between hemp and marijuana which is ridiculous since hemp is just the general term used for plants of the Cannabis genus. Marijuana is in that genus but that doesn’t mean that all hemp can get you intoxicated. There are numerous varieties of hemp that have no drug effects but have all the incredible properties that make it such a valuable industrial plant, yet federal drug enforcement laws prohibit the growing of all Cannabis plants.

 

For those interested in trying to help change US policy on the use of industrialized hemp you can do so at the Vote Hemp website.

Author: Jake Gosselin

Date: 24 April 2009

Source: The Sustainability Ninja

http://www.sustainabilityninja.com/agricul...ootprint-32437/