In the past ten years, especially in the United States and Canada, public acceptance of the cannabis plant has reached an all-time high (no pun intended). Since 2012, almost 20 states have legalized the plant for recreational use. And, in about a dozen more states, cannabis consumption is legal for medical purposes.
Many, however, fail to recognize the cannabis plant's array of potential. For non-intoxicant purposes, people refer to cannabis as hemp. Over thousands of years, humans have leveraged hemp's unique features. The most popular ones include using hemp fiber to make paper, clothing, and textiles. However, modern materials science has conjured another possible hemp application: biodegradable plastic.
Before exploring the probabilities of manufacturers using hemp as a valid input on a massive industrial scale to serve as an answer to the planet's plastic pollution problem, we need to emphasize one thing. We don't feel that delving into the planet's plastic pollution problem is necessary. We've expressed our concerns in many past blogs and LinkedIn content. Readers can find all relevant blogs in our blog library here: www.islandleaf.co/blog, and can discover LinkedIn content here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/island-leaf-commodities.
We recognize that while they must be cut drastically, petroleum-based plastics will never disappear—Island Leaf advocates for responsible management, disposal, and recycling, whether mechanical or chemical.
Our team also actively promotes Lastic Bamboo Resin and products. In addition, we're proud to be sales agents for Lastic, makers of BPI-certified biodegradable straws and utensils. So, we think the world will solve the plastic pollution problem by using an array of replacements (like Lastic products), marginally cutting virgin plastic production year by year, and adopting better recycling methods applicable to more plastic types.
Going back to the idea of hemp-based plastics, however, begs the question: What exactly will the hemp plastics applications be? Will they replace single-use plastic, like bottles, or will they be able to produce plastics with a relatively long life span, including those used in home electronics, automobiles, and more?
Plant-Derived Composites and Plastics: A Brief
John W. Hyatt invented the first plastic in the late 1800s, and he didn't derive it from petroleum. Instead, Hyatt combined cellulose from cotton plants and camphor trees to produce his innovation. What is cellulose?
Cellulose is one of all plants' vital structural components, as it makes up plants' cell walls. Essentially, a cell wall serves the purpose of a skeletal system. At the molecular level, cellulose is a polysaccharide (a carbohydrate), meaning it's formed by a combination of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules. As a result, cellulose is similar to hydrocarbons, the molecules that compose plastics. Thus, it is no surprise that, given a hundred-million-year-plus timespan, cellulose from dead plants eventually becomes the oil that makes virgin plastics.
Hyatt used cellulose to create the plastic that made one of the world's first ESG products: elephant-safe, ivory-free billiard balls. However, the hottest market products Hyatt made from cellulose plastic were dentures. As a result, dentures became Hyatt's flagship product, supporting the company with ample cash flow for almost 100 years.
Although scientists innovated other plant-derived plastics, like bakelite and rayon, oil-derived plastics eventually dominated the plastics market. And everyone knows the consequences that these plastics have wrought on the planet, which is a main reason why some innovators are working to implement hemp-based plastic as a new plastic type. But will hemp-derived plastics become a commonly used oil-derived plastic replacement?
Hemp Today: Environmental Benefits and Industrial Applications
In 2018, the United States government boosted hemp plastic's potential by passing the Farm Bill. The Farm Bill allows farmers to cultivate hemp on an industrial scale. As a result, innovators now have a vast hemp supply with which to tinker.
Compared to other crops that farmers grow for making plant-based polymers, such as corn and soybeans, hemp has critical advantages and environmental benefits. First, hemp doesn't require massive fertilizer and pesticide applications. Thus, growing hemp is ostensibly easier on soil than other industrial-scale monocrops. Secondly, research has shown that industrial hemp plantations serve as effective carbon sinks. So, even before hemp leaves the ground, it reaps environmental benefits.
Hemp has many applications, as its fibers are suitable raw materials for paper-making. In addition, however, hemp shows promise as an additive for industrial-material production.
Currently, manufacturers in the automotive sector are already using hemp-based composites for car production. For example, since the 1990s, Mercedes-Benz has used hemp-based composites to construct its door panels. But, surprisingly, using plant-based fiber composites in car panels is nothing new. Indeed, in the 1940s, Henry Ford used plant-derived composites to construct a one-of-a-kind prototype automobile. Ford created composites from soybeans, hemp, corn, and other crops to build side panels that weighed significantly less than steel panels used during that time.
Using hemp-derived composites in car panels illustrates hemp's usefulness for some industrial materials. However, when we shift hemp's application to a single-use plastic replacement, we can see that the use of this crop is still in its infancy.
The Dawn of Hemp Plastics? Not So Fast.
If manufacturers want to make a genuinely biodegradable hemp polymer, they still need to figure out a few things. First, hemp-resin makers must create a truly biodegradable compound. Unfortunately, Island Leaf could not find one company that produces a 100% biodegradable hemp-plastic compound. Furthermore, many companies we discovered would not explicitly state that their hemp compound is biodegradable. Instead, they would list, on their websites, the various merits of the hemp plant, including its ability to sequester carbon and the fact that it doesn't need vast volumes of fertilizer.
Island Leaf did find one company that makes a hemp-compound biopolymer. However, the company compounds fibers extracted from hemp with the infamous polylactic acid (PLA). Although derived from monocrops like corn, PLA is not biodegradable. PLA only "biodegrades" when put into large, energy-intensive, industrial-scale furnaces.
Our Hemp Plastic Conclusion
Industrial hemp does indeed have some important industrial uses. Also, growing hemp crops has a mild effect on the soil and amplifies its value. But unfortunately, if scientists use hemp as a primary ingredient for a 100% biodegradable compound, they cannot use PLA in tandem.
The good news is that Hemp Plastic technology is still in its infancy, so great potential exists. The major challenge is to create a plastic substitute that can biodegrade naturally. And the facts that hemp plants aren't as resource intensive as other monocrops and provide effective carbon sinks make the possibilities of hemp-based plastics attractive.
Now, though, no biodegradable hemp-plastic solution exists for single-use plastic. However, that's not to say that no biodegradable solution for single-use plastics exists.
Island Leaf Commodities serves as a licensed representative for Lastic Bamboo Resin, the only BPI-certified biodegradable, DIN CERTCO-certified home and garden compostable, plastic replacement for utensils, straws, and other applications. Contact Island Leaf for more information about this game-changing material!
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