Clothing the World with Hemp
By Jose Corcoles, HempHelps.org
Hemp Helps Apparel – Planting Trees with Every Purchase. Better Clothes for a Better World
As proud members of America’s lower-middle class, we have grown accustomed to cotton sheets, shoes and shirts
, simply accepting it as the norm. However, in the process of growing up, we stumbled across a fabric far and away superior to cotton. Best known as marijuana’s cousin, hemp is wrongly labeled as a psychoactive plant, like its wild-card botanical cousin, even though you’re likely to turn purple trying to get high off hemp. Take Levi Strauss’ example instead and make some jeans with the fabric, or, like our ancestors, make some pottery with it that might last 11,000 years.
It’s not news that we need to start moving towards a more sustainable way of living and producing, and what better way to start than by planting this super plant. In a world where we pride ourselves on common sense, we act senselessly sometimes. An acre of hemp produces two to three times more fiber than cotton, while also taking nearly half the amount of water to harvest. There’s no need to worry about Monsanto here since hemp’s quick growth cycle provides high yields without the use of pesticides. Hemp is essentially Mother Nature’s favorite child, while humans are the well-intentioned, hard-headed ones that keep landing in hot water.
There’s no contest here, it’s like trying to compare Miley Cyrus’ voice to Whitney Houston’s.Whether you’re hot or cold, hemp can adjust, since its hollow fibers breathe well in warm weather and insulate in the cold. Hemp textile is eight times stronger than our favorite fabric, cotton, gets softer the more you wash it, and is weaved to last. Archeologists are even finding hemp fabric that dates back to 8,000 BC. You think that shirt in your hamper will last that long?
Mother Nature shows signs of needing help, so we’re in a joint effort to raise awareness on this super plant with solutions. This goes beyond fabric; it has the potential to be a sustainable alternative for paper, plastic, fuel, food, building and medical materials. In a concentrated effort against the lobbyists’ attack on hemp, we can slowly change the future of the Earth so that one day we check our shirt tags and finally it says, “Fabric: HEMP”.
HempHelps.org is a hemp apparel company which, in addition to spreading awareness about the benefits of hemp, has partnered with the organization Trees for the Future to fight against deforestation; they plant three trees for every hemp bracelet sold. and eleven for every hemp t-shirt sold.