Top 5 Products You Can Make With Hemp.

Hemp has been cultivated and made into useful products for around 10.000 years. Because of this, it is easy to understand that the variety of products you can make from hemp is immense. Generally, it is estimated that from the hemp plant you can make around 25.000 different things! In this article, we will keep it simple and tell you 5 popular things that you can make from hemp.

1. Clothing

It may not come as a surprise but one of the main things you can make from hemp is clothing. The process is quite simple. The stalk of the plant is made from long strands of fibre. Once you separate these fibres from the stalk, you can then spin these fibres together to produce a thread. This thread can then be woven into a fabric and can be made into clothing.

This finished fabric has many benefits compared to the fabrics of normal cotton clothing. Because these hemp fibres are a lot stronger, the clothing has a tensile strength 3 times that of cotton. Another great benefit of hemp clothing is the fact that hemp clothing has the ability to regulate body temperature. This means that it will regulate your body temperature to keep you warm in the winter and cold in the summer. It will also remove moisture from the body to keep you dry.

2. Paper

One of the other important things you can make from hemp is paper. The hemp plant offers the ability to make pulp from the fibres. This pulp is mixed with water to make paper.

Most people know that paper is mainly made from wood. But besides the fact that it would be a lot more sustainable to make paper from hemp compared to wood, the hemp paper is also a lot stronger. Hemp fibres offer a four to five times longer fibre which means a significantly higher tear resistance and tensile strength. The reason why hemp paper isn't used as much as wood nowadays is because the paper industry's processes have been optimized for wood. This means the production costs of hemp paper are much higher than for paper made from wood.

3. Plastic

The third important product you can make from hemp is plastic or better said, bioplastic. The process of making hemp plastic is a bit more difficult to explain so we will keep it simple. The important thing you need to know about hemp plastic is that it is much more sustainable than ordinary plastic. Whereas normal plastic takes 500-1000 years to degrade, this hemp-based alternative only takes 3 to 6 months to degrade. Hemp plastic also provides the ability to be recycled indefinitely. Another great ability is the fact that it is non-toxic. Normal plastic can contain endocrine disruptors which can lead to birth defects, cancer, learning disabilities, and more. Hemp plastic doesn't contain any of the harmful toxins of plastic. It is easy to understand what kind of positive impact hemp plastic could have on this planet and its people.

Fun fact: Some car manufacturers like BMW already use plastic made partly from hemp in their cars.

4. Fuel

Next, we look at fuel. Hemp provides the ability to create biofuel. This process is called cellulolysis. Materials of the hemp plant are shredded and heated to release cellulose. Then enzymes are used to break the cellulose into sugars which turned into ethanol. Lastly, the ethanol is purified and distilled into biofuel. The two main types of fuel you can make from hemp are hemp biodiesel and hemp ethanol.

Hemp turns out to be the most cost-efficient and valuable of all the fuel crops we could grow on a scale that could fuel the world. One of the main reasons why hemp was prohibited in the War on Drugs was because big oil companies saw the potential of biodiesel made from hemp. But now that countries are forced to find more sustainable options to prevent climate change, hemp may be on the rise to reclaim the spotlight.

5. Building materials

The main building material you can make from hemp is hempcrete. This alternative to concrete is made from mixing the hemp hurd with lime and water and also only weighs about an eighth compared to concrete. 

Hempcrete has numerous advantages over other building materials, including being fireproof, non-toxic, sustainable, breathable, and highly insulative. This also means that hempcrete is a perfect natural insulation for homes. Once again keeping you warm in the winter and cold in the summer. Nowadays there are a lot of companies that focus on building with hempcrete compared to concrete in order to advance this industry. It goes without saying that hempcrete has a long way to go but progress is being made as we speak.

As we said in the beginning, the possibilities of products you can make from hemp are endless. The one problem is that hemp has had a big setback after it was deemed illegal because of its association with marihuana. Because of this hemp doesn't have the same infrastructure that its counterparts have. But as we speak this is changing. If the demand for hemp-based products keeps rising then this infrastructure will also start growing. And we believe that in the coming year's hemp will play a leading role in fighting climate change. Believe us when we tell you that hemp is the solution to many of our problems.