WHY HEMP?
Our hemp fabric is paired with organic cotton and spandex so that it it's stretchy, feels snug, and lasts. It has a softness like linen or flannel, and softens more and more as you live in it. It relaxes with wear, and snaps back in the wash — kind of like jeans.
Hemp has come a long way since the real deal hippie times, so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be in modern closets today. It’s an abundant crop that feeds the soil, helps with our carbon emission situation, while being a fabric that performs well and feels good on the body.
Facts:
- It doesn’t require chemicals and pesticides to grow or process it. Wood pulp fibres like bamboo and Tencel (modal, or naturally driven viscose included) require chemical processing to make the raw materials into fabric, and I’m not sold on these being sustainable. Especially Tencel, which is made from eucalyptus trees. There is old growth tree cutting in the history of this fabric. While they have their own tree farms for it now, I thought we were trying to move away from tree products, weren’t we? Like what happened to not cutting down trees for paper, now we’re claiming it’s a good environmental thing to do for clothing?!
- A hemp crop leaves the soil with plenty of, which is good for any other crop planted afterwards. Cleans toxins out of the soil. Nutrients formed by hemp…
- Hemp is very fast growing and can produce up to 250% more fibre than cotton on the same amount of land.
- Hemp sucks up carbon, apparently faster than trees. All plants use carbon during photosynthesis, and since hemp produces really fast, it uses carbon fast too. It’s one of the fastest carbon eating plants out there. One hectare of industrial hemp can absorb 15 tonnes of CO2. It happens to eat up more carbon than what's emitted from the equipment used to harvest, process, and transport it. (European Industrial Hemp Association)
- Hemp assists in phytoremediation. Basically, it’s a very tolerant plant. More sensitive plants, like lettuce, wouldn’t do so well if you planted it in heavily contaminated soil. (Like sewage and high heavy metal counts) The roots of hemp suck up a lot of nutrients, but they also suck up pollutants, removing heavy metals and unwanted toxins from the soil, leaving it better than as it was before.
- The fibres are historically known for being durable and outlasting — and we all know that a garment that lasts is a sustainable one.