A No Waste Economy

In the How Will We Conduct Business article, we have taken advantage of our earth for many years thinking that it provided us with an endless source of natural resources.  In the United States alone, we generate 12 billion tons of solid waste a year which pollutes our earth harming it and us.  A dollar sign was never put on drilling or mining our resources so we took advantage and what we needed until we found out that the earth does not make more of what we are taking from it.  Our view is for an approach to manufacture over a long term to be properly defined and executed and continually updated and supported to evaluate and minimize impacts to the earth, called industrial ecology, ‘Industrial Ecology: The Concept.’

To this day, a product visits one of two fates at the end of its useful life, it can be either be buried in a landfill or incinerated, or it can be recycled or reused.  ‘The ‘closed-loop’ dream of industrial ecology will not be complete until all products that are sent out into the world are folded back into the system’ (How Will We Conduct Business).  In the apparel industry, for our clothing and fabric products not to pile up in a landfill, it will all have to be biodegradable and fertilize the ground or reusable in many eco-friendly ways.  Hemp is completely biodegradable and is one of the few plants whose byproducts can either be eaten, sat on, written on, and used as medicine, fuel, worn or squirted into a machine.  Not only is hemp well rounded in how we can use it but it also improves water quality because it does not use pesticides or herbicides in order to grow.  Hemp is naturally resistant to mold, bacteria and pests and therefore has no toxic runoff from the fields.  It also adds nutrients to the soil, removes toxins, aerates the soil and prevents soil erosion with its long roots.  Hemp actually leaves the soil in better condition than before it was planted.  Another eco-friendly aspect is hemp’s dense growth helps control and eliminates weeds; it also is a high-yield crop that matures on an average of 120 days and is able to be grown on the same land every two to three years, Hemp: Historic Fiber Remains Controversial.  

For the food and car industry, plastics can be derived from plant cellulose, and since hemp is the greatest cellulose producer on Earth it only makes sense to make non-toxic, biodegradable plastic from hemp and other organics, instead of letting our dumps fill up with waste.  These composites are less expensive than dangerous fiberglass counterparts which give hemp the upper hand.  It could also replace carbon and glass fibers, which have environmental and weight problems on the earth, Hemphasis. http://www.hemphasis.net/Building/plasticmettle.htm

All of these wonderful facts about hemp make hemp the best choice all around for us to have a sustainable world in the future.  People do like the feel of cotton, but if we can intertwine hemp to feel and look the same, we will have overcome the harsh ways cotton is on our world, and make a better future.  When we are not using a biodegradable material, we need to use materials sparingly, to build for durability and to not overbuild, How Will We Conduct Business.  When you think of a bee, they build what they only need with a minimum number of materials and success to survive.  As we continue to live on the earth, we need to learn that minimum is okay and will be enough for us to survive as we continue to learn and grow.