Friday 15 April 2016

WHY ARE WE NOT USING HEMP?

WHAT IS HEMP OR MORE COMMONLY REFERRED TO AS INDUSTRIAL HEMP?

It is a commonly used term for high-growing industrial varieties of the Cannabis plant and its products, which include fibre, oil and seed.

Hemp is refined into products such as hemp seed foods, hemp oil, wax, resin, rope, cloth, pulp, paper and fuel.

Industrial Hemp is not to be confused with the close relative cannabis, which is also a Cannabis plant, but is widely used as a recreational drug and medicine.

THE BENEFITS OF USING HEMP:

  • Hemp fibre is the longest, strongest and most durable of all natural fibres.
  • Hemp cultivation requires no chemicals, pesticides or herbicides and controls erosion of the topsoil and produces oxygen.
  • Grown in rotation with other crops such as corn and legumes, hemp farming is completely sustainable.
  • Hemp produces four times as much fibre per acre as pine trees.
  • Hemp tree-free paper can be recycled up to seven times, compared with three times for pine-pulp based papers.
  • Hemp is easy to grow, and actually conditions the soil where it grows.
  • The seed and seed-oil are HIGH IN PROTEIN, ESSENTIAL FATTY AND AMINO ACIDS AND VITAMINS.
  • Hemp would be an ideal source of biomass for fuel and hemp Ethanol burns very cleanly.
  • Hemp and humanity have been linked for over 10, 000 years.
  • Hemp was our first agricultural crop, and remained the planet's largest crop and most important industry until late last century.
  • Furthermore, hemp can be used to replace many potentially harmful products, such as tree paper, (the processed of which used chlorine bleach, which results in the waste product 'polychlorinated dibenzodioxins', popularly known as 'dioxins', which are carcinogenic and contribute to deforestation, cosmetics and plastic, most of which are petroleum-based and do not decompose easily.  The strongest chemical needed to whiten the already light hemp paper is non-toxic hydrogen peroxide. 


AT PRESENT...
Hemp stalks and seeds are used by industrial/commercial companies for textiles, foods, papers, body care products, detergents, plastics and building materials. 

Today hemp for commercial use is grown mostly by China, Hungary, England, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and India and throughout Asia.

The difference between - Hemp and Marijuana: both come from the same plant - Cannabis Sativa L. However, it is from a different variety, or subspecies that contains many important differences.


Industrial hemp contains only about 0.3% - 1.5% THC (Tetrahydrocannabinoids, the intoxicating ingredients that make you high) while marijuana contains about 5% - 10% or more THC. 
In order to get a psychoactive effect, one would need to smoke ten or twelve hemp cigarettes over a very short period of time.  

“Industrial hemp could transform the economy of the ‘Whole World’ in a positive and beneficial way, and therefore should be exploited to its full potential.”

Thursday 7 April 2016

WHY SHOULD WE RECYCLE?

Firstly, in order to help heal Mother Earth everyone on of us need to reduce our garbage load i.e. ‘Carbon footprint’.

One of the ways to do this is ‘recycling’. 

By not separating and recycling we are overloading the Mother Earth.  Everything then goes and gets thrown into the already full landfills.    

Landfills are actually huge holes made in Mother Earth. So basically, what we are doing is burying our garbage into Mother Earth and hoping it will all go away. But actually it can’t since most of the garbage is manmade ‘plastic’ – which of course - non bio-degradable.

And since we are now running out of landfill space – the garbage is being deposited into the ocean – example: the Great Pacific garbage patch and many others and we are already aware of the effect and damage this is causing on the Marine mammals. 
Lets all try our best to help heal our Mother Earth by doing our bit - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - the best way forward...

POLYSTYRENE FOAM/ STYROFOAM & RECYCLING

DID YOU KNOW?
Polystyrene foam just can’t be recycled and made to take another form or mould again (as the general plastic) because it’s already expanded.
In order to make polystyrene cups etc. one needs to use virgin polystyrene beads.


There are TWO MAIN TYPES OF POLYSTYRENE in use today – rigid polystyrene, and expanded polystyrene (also known as Styrofoam or polystyrene foam).

Ø  RIGID POLYSTYRENE (PS) – example: yoghurt tubs – is just polystyrene plastic, with no air bubbles added. This is much easier to recycle, and can simply be melted and moulded into new containers and other products.













Ø  EXPANDED POLYSTYRENE (EPS) OR POLYSTYRENE FOAM – the white “bubbly” plastic frames often used in packaging for furniture or electronic goods – is actually up to 98% air, and as little as 2% plastic. As a result, it is quite difficult to transport and recycle efficiently and economically.

THE PROCESS TO MAKE:
Small beads of the polymer polystyrene are steamed with chemicals until they expanded to 50 times their original volume. After cooling and settling, the pre-expanded beads are then blown into a mould until the mould is completely filled and all of the beads have fused together - such as that of a drink cup.

BENEFITS
The finished product is a lightweight, inexpensive material that is about 95% to 98% air.  The insulating properties and cheap manufacturing costs of EPS have made it a popular choice for businesses.

DISADVANTAGES
·         Polystyrene foam gets lodged in the intestines of marine animals and that causes blockages that can be lethal. (Think about how we worry about a mild blockage from eating the wrong thing; imagine eating a ball of Styrofoam.)

·         Polystyrene foams essentially act like little pollutant sponges, picking up and concentrating some of the nastiest contaminants in the ocean, then something like a sea turtle comes along and eats this thinking it is a jellyfish. 

·         Some of these plastic-feeding fish may be ending up back on our tables.

THERMAL RECYCLING (an option)
In this process, the recycled EPS is burned in municipal incinerators, leaving behind carbon dioxide and water vapours. This makes it a good fuel for waste-to-energy programs that use heat. While thermal recycling could be an effective re-use of polystyrene waste, its cost of transporting loads of light, bulky polystyrene to recycling centres could be very costly.

SO HOW TO DISPOSE OF USED POLYSTYRENE?
Ø  Polystyrene containers such as yoghurt tubs etc. can and should be recycled.

However polystyrene foam is very rarely accepted for recycling. There are a few companies that specialise in recycling expanded polystyrene, you could contact your local municipality or look it up on the internet.


Otherwise, these items have been placed in the general waste bin, which then gets dumped into the already full landfills and if this is not possible then it ends up in the ocean.  

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES TO USING POLYSTYRENE FOAM?
Paper-based alternatives…or

A more recyclable compound such as polypropylene is an alternative.
Polypropylene is a resin-based substance that is often used for plastic takeaway containers. While polypropylene is more easily recycled than polystyrene, it is also more expensive.

SOLUTION:
Polystyrene foam has to replace with a more viable alternative OR a more economical and viable solution should be found to have them recycled and be enforced as a rule worldwide.

"INDUSTRIAL HEMP is the perfect SOLUTION"

Source:
Why New York banned polystyrene foam