Hemp Fact Friday

The environmental impact of paper is significant, which has led to changes in industry behavior at both business and personal levels. With the use of modern technology such as the printing press and the highly mechanized harvesting of wood, disposable paper has become a cheap commodity. This has led to a high level of consumption and waste.

Switching to hemp paper will make an immense improvement to our environment versus our current methods of paper making. One acre of usable hemp fiber is equal to the usable fiber of four acres of trees. Using hemp could save the land cleared for agriculture means and reduce deforestation. On average a hemp crop can be harvested in ninety days, while trees take around twenty- five years! Hemp can be grown without fertilizer and also replenishes soil with nitrogen and nutrients, increases the topsoil, and restores the health and fertility of the soil.

Processing hemp fiber for paper does not require chlorine that produces dioxins as it does with wood pulp. The paper industry which today mostly uses wood pulp has now become the 3rd largest polluter. Paper waste accounts for up to 40% of total waste in the United States, which adds up to 71.6 million tons of waste per year in the United States alone. Paper waste like other wastes faces the additional hazard of toxic inks, dyes and polymers that could be potentially carcinogenic when incinerated, or released into groundwater via traditional burial methods such as modern landfills.

Paper recycling mitigates this impact, but not the environmental and economic impact of the energy consumed by manufacturing paper products. For example, air emissions of hydrogen sulfide, methyl mercaptan, dimethyl sulfide, dimethyl disulfide, and other volatile sulfur compounds are the cause of the odor characteristics of some pulp mills. Other chemicals that are released into the air and water from most paper mills are suspected or known carcinogens, others are toxic, will not biodegrade or simply have a strong potential to cause irritation and allergic reactions:

• carbon monoxide

• ammonia

• nitrogen oxide

• mercury

• nitrates

• methanol

• benzene

• volatile organic compounds, chloroform

Reference: http://millwatch.ca/news-from-millwatch/