by HempHoodlambwww.ecothredz.com
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BEHIND THE HEMP
When Jason Finnis launched his eco-textile company in the 1990s, he heard a lot of jokes about products made with natural fibres like hemp. People said I must be smoking what Im selling who would want to buy clothes made of hemp? he says.
Today, 13 years later, consumer demand has caught up, and Finnis company Naturally Advanced Technologies (NAT) provides environmentally friendly clothing to clients such as Google, Starbucks and Costco through its wholly owned subsidiary HTnaturals. Sustainability is a global megatrend everything from cars to food to cosmetics is becoming greener, says Finnis.
The company is banking on that demand as it prepares to enter the $150 billion global market for apparel and upholstery textiles with Canadian-grown hemp that offers an environmentally friendly alternative to organic cotton. Organic cotton is a step in the right direction, but it still requires an enormous amount of water to grow, says Finnis. Hemp is higher yielding and can be transformed into high-value textile fibre that we expect will be stronger, more comfortable and better for the planet.
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The high points of hemp
Although industrial hemp belongs to the same species as marijuana, Cannabis sativa, it has been modified for long fibres and fast growth, and contains almost no THC the substance in marijuana that creates a hallucinogenic effect.
As a crop, hemp offers many environmental advantages over cotton. It can be grown without pesticides or herbicides, and uses far less water to produce and process. According to the World Wildlife Fund, up to 29,000 litres of water are required for every 1 kilogram of cotton produced. All that hemp needs is rainfall, says Jason Finnis, president of Vancouver-based Naturally Advanced Technologies.
Hemp after processing with the biotech enzyme technology developed by NRC.
The technology allows NAT to overcome one of the biggest challenges of processing hemp turning the tough fibre into yarn. The process developed by Dr. Sung uses enzymes, which are proteins produced in the cells of all living organisms, to separate the fibres. In contrast, the processing technologies used in China and Eastern Europe, where most of the hemp sold in North America is currently grown, use chemicals that are harmful to the environment.
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