yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Can You Build a House With Hemp? | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] Some of the most practical uses of industrial hemp in the modern day, of course, are the same as they ever were: building materials, paper, textiles, seed oil, nutrition. Hempcrete, of all the 50,000 known products that we can make with industrial hemp, is my absolute favorite. It is a mold resistant, rot resistant, pest resistant, fire resistant, carbon negative building material.

The most difficult part of pioneering industrial hemp in Oregon is the lack of understanding. People still believe that hemp can get you high when, in fact, there are no psychoactive components to this. So it's a matter of educating people, and we're working on that. Hemp in the United States can be an incredibly viable commodity since the beginning of time.

It’s the only plant that can feed you, house you, clothe you, and heal you. It has hardy fiber, the strongest fibers found in nature. Every part of the plant can be used, you know, from the stalk, the leaves, and the flowers, and the seeds. Each one of those components can be used for thousands of different uses.

Each of these plants will take usually three to four months; they'll reach heights of eight or nine feet. We'll harvest them and then we'll separate out the fibers and the flowers, the seeds, and the rest of the education to make different products. I think in order to launch hempcrete building, to make it real, you have to have a model.

So my vision is to take this house and retrofit it with hempcrete and demonstrate that it's a viable building process. In fact, it's everything that you want in a building. In a wall, it's permeable, so it mediates the humidity in the room. But since the wall absorbs the humidity and the lime that you build with is a high pH, it doesn't mold.

So the wall will hold on to the humidity and disperse it inside or outside as it's needed. Buildings consume 40 to 50 percent of the world's energy, so if we could establish hempcrete building, it's huge. As you get more into the nature of hemp and its abundant properties, that becomes part of the imagination of what I have.

Great building can be the future. Hemp is an opportunity for everyone. We're going to find sustainable uses that we've never even thought were possible, taking advantage of a knowledge base that has never been created because it's been illegal.

And I would hope to see, you know, five years from now, just fields of green. I think hemp has a lot of answers for nutrition, for energy saving, for building. The ideal future is that we have enough hemp growing on the planet in the hands of as many people as find use for it because it has so much to give.

More Articles

View All
Chris Hemsworth Surprises Fans at Ed Sheeran Concert Playing Drums | Limitless With Chris Hemsworth
The this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. Yeah, here, no, for Chris Hemsworth in January. I sat him down at my drum kit, and he sort of had a bit of a play. He was like, “Cuz, we’re doing this show, and I’m going to play on your show.” And he played …
Hovering a Helicopter is Hilariously Hard - Smarter Every Day 145
Hey, it’s me Destin, welcome back to Smarter Every Day. If there is one thing that I learnt from the backwards bicycle experiment, it is that knowledge is not understanding. So a couple of years ago when I made the YouTube series about helicopter physics,…
Why Geeks are Sexy: The Wing Girls
Hey Vsauce! I’ve got something special for you today. I’m sure you’ve heard of a wingman before, but have you ever heard of a wing girl? Well, guess what? There’s two of them right now! They met with Ben and Mark in LA like a few weeks ago, and I said, “H…
How to FLY A SPACESHIP to the SPACE STATION - Smarter Every Day 131
Hey, it’s me Destin, welcome back to Smarter Every Day. Most people know that if you’re gonna go to the International Space Station, you first get on this rocket in Russia called the Soyuz. You strap yourself in, you launch from Baikonur and you go straig…
Taxing Unrealized Values Can Destroy Billionaires
Most people don’t realize that this can actually make Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos go broke and send their stocks crashing. The reason is because 48 trillion dollars of stock value equals zero dollars in real money, and the IRS only takes real money. Bi…
Impacts of Agricultural Practices| Land and water use| AP Environmental science| Khan Academy
Hey there! Today I’m going to cover the impacts of agricultural practices. To do so, I’m going to take you through my morning ritual. It sounds weird, but my bowl of multigrain Cheerios and rice milk and relaxing in my super comfy pajamas are all connecte…