50 Percent of Our Oil Habit Makes Plastics, but Hemp Can Curb Our Addiction [View all]

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/50-percent-our-oil-habit-makes-plastics-hemp-can-curb-our-addiction-1393253982

One of the greatest boons to legalizing industrial hemp, the non-hallucinatory version of Cannabis, is that it can replace our oil habit. Even if we all stopped driving our cars today, we would still be married to Middle Eastern oil, Keystone Pipelines and the wars that are waged in order to keep this resource at our fingertips.

Why? Americans use 1500 plastic water bottles every second and that’s just one plastic product. In 2010, about 191 million barrels of liquid petroleum gases (LPG) and natural gas liquids (NGL) were used in the U.S. to make plastic products in the plastic materials and resins industry. Furthermore, natural gas is used to manufacture oil-based plastic materials and resins. In 2010, about 412 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of natural gas were used to make plastic materials and resins. Not only are we addicted to oil-based cars, due to the suppression of alternative fuels and even a hemp-based car created by Henry Ford himself, we are addicted to plastic products. Oil and its extraction doesn’t just cause costly wars, it also makes our environment and everything in it, toxic. Fracking damages ground water and yet our governments continue to drill away.

Conversely, industrial hemp is grown for its long stalks and low THC constituents (less than .5 percent which makes it anything but a drug) is one of the strongest, most sustainable fibers on the planet. In Ford’s car, it ran on bio-diesel fuel and even had hemp-plastic panels that were ten times stronger than steel. Hemp is so resilient it can even be used to substitute oil-based plastics. One hundred percent hemp plastics are varied and entirely recyclable and biodegradable. Hemp is grown with less water and polluting pesticides than cotton, the crop that took it over due to the suppression of a machine, which could separate hemp fibers from its stalks more than 100 years ago. Industry competitors bought out the patent rights.

emp plastics are also five times stiffer and more than twice as strong as polypropylene plastics (PP). This type of plastic is full of BPAs, which are a known carcinogen, but even without BPAs, PPs are still not safe. Hemp is not toxic because it is a plant and nothing more. The fibers of hemp are used to create hard plastics, or pliable ones for everything from yogurt lids to CD cases. It is even fire-retardant under some specifications. We don’t have to fill our oceans and landfills with plastic bottles and bags. Hemp can replace them all. Its also a great replacement for Styrofoam and can be manufactured at very low cost.