Humans are frighteningly addicted to plastic – and the situation is getting steadily worse. In the US, only 14% of plastic is collected and just 5% is actually recycled, meaning 95% of plastic waste falls into the single-use system and ends up in landfills – or worse – in the ocean. As the Ellen MacArthur Foundation noted, by 2050 there will be more plastic floating in the world’s oceans than fish, unless something changes soon.
This is naturally a catastrophic situation that urgently demands affordable and scalable solutions. Attempts to reduce plastic usage and strengthen recycling programs will only address the situation to a certain degree. What we urgently need is a system redesign and a fundamental shift regarding the raw materials used throughout plastic production.
As it turns out, hemp fortunately has what it takes to answer this call for change. Hemp oil, lignin, hemp fibers, and hurds are not only incredibly versatile, but can also be produced exceptionally cheaply and profitably. These impressive hemp raw materials can be used to create thousands of different products, such as bioplastics, biopolymers, or biocomposites. After hemp hasn’t been commercially grown in the US for more than 78 years, current trends toward legalizing industrial hemp cultivation are creating new economic opportunities for this versatile plant. However, for hemp to ultimately have the positive environmental impact it’s capable of, full federal legalization is still needed, as well as government subsidies and investments to stimulate new growth.
Hemp fiber plastics will soon replace fractions of petroleum-based plastics, although there are signs pointing to a complete switch by major companies, since hemp fiber plastics are not only stronger, but also much lighter and completely non-toxic. Automakers like BMW and Mercedes-Benz currently use hemp-based bioplastics for door panel and interior insulation. In the new BMW i3, hemp was used to enhance performance, both to save weight and to meet aesthetic design requirements. Designer Benoit Jacob is convinced that using natural materials like hemp gives the i3’s interior an ambiance like „a small loft on wheels.“ Thankfully, these two automakers aren’t the only companies betting on hemp-based biomaterials. Besides them, there are a multitude of exciting startups seizing the opportunity to both protect the environment and make profits at the same time.
This article will provide insight into the current business landscape regarding hemp fiber bioplastics and biomaterials in North America.
A young company called c2renew based in Fargo, North Dakota develops performance-oriented biocomposite materials that offer a green alternative at stable prices. Due to their great expertise in biomaterials, they fill a niche in the industrial composite sector, which is unique considering the company’s position in the supply chain. After they began producing custom biocomposite plastic parts for large firms like John Deere, Bobcat, Appareo, and Toshiba, they initially found that these large companies basically only valued their cost competitiveness; but now, as they too embrace change and pay more attention to sustainability, the ecological added value is gaining importance for them as well.
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Appreciation for sustainability is something that innovative and responsible smaller companies and startups not only live by, but which also helps them achieve breakthroughs. Earthkind, for example, an emerging brand that sells all kinds of natural air fresheners and insect repellents, turned to c2renew for help in producing a high-performance and attractive biocomposite plastic product. Another example of a startup working with c2renew is a company called 3DFUEL, which manufactures filaments for 3D printers. Together they created three different bioplastic filament types: „Entwinded“ from hemp, „Wound up“ from coffee waste, and „Buzzed“ from brewery waste.
A Texas-based company called Greenspring Technologies uses this very „Entwined“ hemp bioplastic filament to manufacture company pens and other novelties, like guitar picks. Owner Mark Linday says they’ve already moved to injection molding the hemp plastic pens and that one of their pens was recently used to sign new hemp legislation in Pennsylvania.
c2renew co-founder and CTO Dr. Chad Ulven is an associate professor at North Dakota State University and works as a researcher at the Center for Sustainable Materials Science – a research initiative at NDSU that has been funded by the National Science Foundation for five years. The main strategic goal is to develop and implement a transformative approach to developing sustainable materials derived from agricultural materials to replace petrochemical polymer materials in everyday use. This involves a large group of scientists from agricultural engineering, chemistry, mechanical engineering, and other fields.
Materials research and production standardization are important first steps in the bioplastic manufacturing revolution. It’s clear that it will be the younger generation of entrepreneurs who bring these products to market, like the fresh graduates from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado and founders of Sana Packaging, James Eichner and Ron Basak-Smith. Less than a year ago, the young entrepreneurs started their hemp plastic packaging company as a college project during their studies. But soon they were accepted into the Canopy Boulder Accelerator Program. Since they successfully completed both university and the accelerator program simultaneously in May 2017, they’ve been working full-time to advance their company. Sana Packaging focuses on producing attractive, environmentally compatible, and safe packaging solutions for the medical cannabis market and recreational cannabis consumption. In this market niche, they are by far among the market leaders. They’re convinced that this position will help them reinvest and expand into other markets in the future.
Sunstrand, another technically advanced biomaterials company, is doing impressive work in Louisville, Kentucky. Sunstrand is the premium provider of biomaterials for technical applications in the US. CEO Trey Riddle and his team claim to have perfected the industrial process for bark removal, or rather to provide the best decortication equipment for separating hemp hurds and fibers. They also carry out additional processes to meet material-specific manufacturer specifications. Sunstrand supplies upstream manufacturers in product design.
Sunstrand’s products and processes are designed to consistently deliver high-quality materials compatible with a wide variety of applications. Their focus is on mass-producing raw materials for plastic, polymer material, and nonwoven manufacturing industries. By sourcing their materials locally and creating innovative processing technologies, they enable producers to bring high-performance, attractive, and sustainable products to market. Before Sunstrand, it wasn’t thought possible to eventually replace traditional materials.
Currently, Sunstrand is working on a pilot project: a processing machine with an annual capacity of 3,000 tons. However, the plan is to build industrial-scale processing facilities with an annual capacity of 22,000 tons in the future.
Perhaps the most technologically advanced bioplastic processing company in the US is PureVision Technology, Inc. A 24-year-old biorefinery technology company that has founded subsidiary PureHemp with exclusive, global refining technologies and market rights for producing hemp-based raw materials and products. PureHemp has already tested its invention of a continuous counter-current reactor, the „CCR“ technology, in a pilot project that delivered extremely promising results. The plan is to produce a four-ton CCR on a manageable commercial scale this year, to finally start building a 40-ton daily capacity CCR by the end of 2018 or early 2019. The deployment of PureHemp’s CCR technology will provide significant added value to the emerging industry, as it allows the entire hemp plant to be used for producing hemp-based products. Using PureHemp CCR technology, in addition to traditional products, novel hemp products can be manufactured, specifically pulp, lignin, sugars, and extracts.
Hemp can even be used in the future for manufacturing materials that go beyond plastics, polymers, and composites. Scientists in NYC and elsewhere have already successfully used hemp in producing alternatives to carbon nanotubes from graphene, which they call HempPhene. Depending on how HempPhene is produced, it has the property of being 100 times stronger and 1,000 times lighter than steel. But the most fascinating thing about it is that HempPhene can be produced for a fraction of the cost required for manual graphene production, since the plant does most of the work for us. It’s quite possible that we’ll soon encounter groundbreaking infrastructure based on HempPhene: bridges, skyscrapers, and much more could then be made from hemp.
In summary, it’s exciting to imagine a future where plastic is no longer a bad thing. But if we want to live in such a reality, we as consumers must not only demand the adoption and spread of hemp-based bioplastics, but also expect and support them. There’s the possibility of shifting industry pathways and even using the economy to protect the environment instead of destroying it.
By Thatcher Michelsen, Founder of EatMoreHemp and Hemp3D
