Hemp still holds a lot of promise for the future. It is a hearty, low maintenance crop that improves the productivity of the land. It produces up to four times as much usable fiber per acre as forests. Its strength makes it flexible for use in a wide variety of settings including nonwovens, papers, and geotextiles, not to mention additional uses for its hurds, seeds, and leaves. But using this “wonder crop” efficiently will require a reboot of its production system and a good, hard look at whether or not naturally-sourced dyes and chemicals are as sustainable as they sound. Though hemp is agriculturally primed to be a long-term, sustainable solution, we need to start investing in the improvement of its production chain right now. However, I believe that the changes we need to make reflect deficiencies of the entire textile industry, rather than of hemp alone. Hemp will be an interesting case study for the future – if the textile industry fails to maximize the potential one of the world’s most inherently sustainable crops, then we will have little reason to believe it will ever operate at the level of efficiency our growing population demands.
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
3:36 Getting to know Madison Sexton of Hem Mills Inc.
6:21 What Madison can see on Moving Forward?
7:30 What type of products that Hem Mills looking at creating in the near future?
9:28 The difference between cotton and hemp in manufacturing
10:25 How Hem Mills source their materials?
11:30 The Importance of installed Mills in the United States
12:37 About Decortication Facilities
15:02 Planning to Improve the Hemp Fiber
18:54 Value of Buying and Knowing Where the Supply Chain is: The things consumers need to be aware of
20:19 What is the Value to a hemp-based product VS cotton product?
21:40 The Hemp Solution on Big Scale
22:48 Hemp vs Synthetic
24:08 How Hemp-Based PPE help Supply Chains to protect people during Pandemic
26:32 How Hem Mills See Most of their Fabrics, Biggest Buyers and Where do they see their products going to
28:12 Hem Mills on 100% hemp-based products/ The Reason hemp blend into synthetic
29:31 Viewers questions and comments
31:30 Innovative products that Hemp really infiltrating into the markets
33:09 HEMP CANVAS: Make a great business
33:53 The SEC Sustainable apparel coalition index
35:32 What do people need to bring together to move needle along and How the Association can help?
38:56 Big value add to an association is knowing where the resources are
42:00 Hemp Fiber Industry Fulfilling the Demand on Big Companies
43:45 Textile Committee: Hemp Education
44:06 AHA future plans
49:33 How to connect with Hem Mills Inc.
51:47 Good Honest American Made Products
52:31 AHA: Meetings and Membership