Why Hemp is the Future of Sustainable Materials - Paul Benhaim Interview Part 1
An interview between Dylan Wood from Broadleaf Hemp (BLH) and Paul Benhaim from The Hemp Plastic Company (PB). | www.hempplastic.com | www.broadleafhemp.com
Exploring the Versatility of Hemp
BLH: Something I get asked about a lot is what can you do with Hemp and my answer to that is anything! There's over 25,000 recognised industrial uses of the hemp plant and I think the question is more like what can't you make out of Hemp? I like to look around the room and point at things and say that could be Hemp that could be Hemp and it's true and you work backwards from there and think about how we actually go to do that? That's how I like to think about hemp.
So my first question is ; is there anything that your aware of that can’t be made out of hemp?
PB: There probably are somethings that can't be made out of hemp, you know like certain minerals that we use like lithium for a battery's for example. But we could make a hemp battery from Graphene - i’m not yet sure if that is more efficient?
I accept that you can make me everything from Hemp. Is hemp good and should it be used for everything? No. Is it good for many things? Far more than nearly any other part that I'm aware of - yes, it is good for many things.
Can it make 25,000 things? Probably. But it's also probably that ‘only’ 10 of those things are commercial.
“Only 10 things?!” Sometimes we're like amazed when we can use three or four different uses for a plant. With Hemp, there really is many commercially viable uses with better technical specifications. So, let's just grow these industries first and I think over time we'll discover even more uses.
BLH: I tried to think about what can't be made out of Hemp, and I thought glass. But then I thought; Hemp, actually has a really high silicon content, and you could probably extract that silicon and then you might actually be able to make glass. I wouldn't be surprised if people will be doing it by the end of the year.
People will be doing things with hemp in 50 years time that you and I can’t even imagine because of the exponential nature of evolution. With all these new industrial solutions that people have invented over the last 10,000 years, I think that in our lifetime we will see that exponential curve.
Global Hemp Evolution
The way I think about it is “how to reproduce the eco-friendly alternatives to the industrial feedstocks that we need today?” We already know that from Hemp, you can make a paper. You can make a wood, we see some happening come out of America and that's really exciting. You can make a wood chip, which is what we have here, which is obviously far more eco-friendly than cutting down native forest. But most excitingly I think, is that you could actually use it to make a metal from plants. And that metal is called graphene. It's more like a metal alloy, but essentially the carbon structure that's being extracted from the plant is stuck back together, which is almost like a metal.
So I think that you can make all these different raw materials that people can then take and say make a car or make a house or whatever it is that they want to make. Some people say in 50 years time but you know it's happening right now here in 2024.
So in 50 years time, with all of the evolution, presumably it has to go exponential. So long story short, there's no need to be cutting down trees or digging big holes in the ground. It'll be more exciting and more valuable and more profitable in the long run to be investing in and researching hemp Hemp and other things like hemp that can create things that we use to build our society today, but more socially just and more eco-friendly.
PB: It’s great,I love imagining that and ultimately its’ a choice; “do we want to invest our time and resources to make this happen today ?” I know that you are personally dedicating your time to that, as am I. And it's a really exciting space to be in right now because the future is bright, we are growing a dream for many.
BLH: You and I were working on a project together and everyone seems think that the world's going to end at the moment. So it's hard to get traction in the business world but you said “if the world doesn’t end then we have the have the answers” and I truly believe that. The world's not going to end and it is going to go the way that we are dreaming.
So, you're really well known in the hemp world and you’re pioneer. But besides what you're doing personally, you must have seen what almost everyone else in the whole world's doing in hemp? So, is there anything that really excites you that other people are doing?
PB Well I don’t know about everyone in the whole world, I used to know almost everyone in the hemp industry but now lots of people have joined which is fantastic.
So although I know longer know ‘everyone’ in this growing industry, I am very lucky to be able to travel and meet people who are at the forefront of hemp through every continent on this planet. I am lucky to see lots of wonderful things come from this plant, not least of which are new medicines and lots of very exciting uses for humanity.
Hemp textiles & Building Materials
PB: I love some of the new textile blends. They've got 100% hemp fabrics which are phenomenal. You know, they have blended together different fibres to produce an amazing feeling and looking fabrics. And I love, obviously, my work with hemp plastics is really exciting and I'm starting to see that being used in all different types of industries from automotive to electronics to industrial uses and beyond.
The building industry, as I said earlier, is just beginning. And I am very excited to see how that progresses.
You can already build up phenomenal house, the technologies exist, the people that are doing it exist and the houses exist and it's just getting better and better and better. And I can't wait to see where that goes. And the list goes on and it could keep going on but we have limited time here.
But it is really exciting to see ongoing advances in this world. And that's all supported by people who are farming, creating wonderful genetics, to make farming more efficient, for processors making primary processing more efficient. And that's where there's a lot of private individuals doing that good work. And I look forward to more, I guess, government support for that to happen so that people can make other uses.
So when we supply Hemp plastic pellets to people they'll find more uses for this material, and create change within those industries. The raw materials will end up getting turned into more funny and funky and wonderful uses for us to live more sustainably on this planet.
BLH: This is exactly right and there's so many people working on it right now that are looking to give the answers to the problems that we currently have, industrially and medically wise. And we are standing on the shoulders of giants and the evolution of everything that came before us of ancient humans figuring this out and then getting it all away from where it was in the 1930’s and the 40s, which was actually a very high level and then nearly 100 years of cannabis prohibition and we're coming back now.
Looking forward to the future still though and as exciting as it is, as so many people are throwing their hat the ring now and things are getting bigger and better. Let's look at your focus, your career in the hemp world is over three decades now, really isn't it? So you have distilled your focus to where you can make the biggest positive impact in the world.
Would you say that your philosophy is not to destroy existing industries and infrastructure and rebuild them, but to take what already exists and make it better and more sustainable?
PB: Yeah, I guess that's what I'm doing, in the plastics world. I'm going to the plastic world and rather than saying; “hey, you use fossil fuels, you shouldn’t do that, instead we are saying here's a plant based sustainable alternative that can sequester carbon, why don't you use that instead of fossil fuels that are a significant cause of climate change - here (www.hempplastic.com) is an option to choose that should you choose to do so…”
And the brands have to make that choice depending on what their customers say and then they tell the injection molder. There's a process for that to happen and by keeping on doing what we're doing, we're slowly making that change through the chains of industry that exist in the plastics world.
An interview between Dylan Wood from Broadleaf Hemp (BLH) and Paul Benhaim from The Hemp Plastic Company (PB). | www.hempplastic.com | www.broadleafhemp.com