by Kitty_tc_69 » Fri Feb 27, 2009 6:53 pm
Hello, hemp paper. We should be legalizing hemp and imposing hefty fees and regulations on the use of trees.
It's even carbon-friendly. Hemp, like all plants, requires carbon to grow and in fact sucks carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and exhales oxygen back. And in the time it takes to grow one tree, or one plot of trees, a field of hemp can be harvested and regrown a dozen times or more depending on the type of tree, maybe even hundreds.
Between hemp and bamboo, we could almost eliminate the need to use trees for much of anything and leave the damned forests alone already. Hemp fiber products are higher in quality than wood or cotton equivalents, and cheaper and easier in most cases to grow and process. Bamboo is light, hard, strong, and similarly fast-growing and able to be farmed in easily maintained fields. Imagine a beautiful hardwood product for the price of particle board, with environmental sustainability, and that's what bamboo offers.
Both offer better end-user experience and higher quality products while being cheaper and more efficient to grow, harvest, and process. Even without the massive sustainability advantage, they're better. Only resistance from entrenched businesses using their influence to block competition keeps the old ways from being phased out. Free market my ass when companies can use the courts and legislatures to prop up outmoded business models instead of allowing competition to put an end to them and their obsolete ways.