Ancient hardy plants provide modern solution for supplying raw materials for a plethora of textiles
Bamboo grows fast and tall everywhere but Antarctica, providing a plentiful supply of sustainable fibre.
The ancient and hardy plants bamboo and hemp are often derided as invasive, pesky, worthless and even dangerous.
In reality, it's quite the contrary. The plants are now proving to be worth well more than their weight in gold to manufacturers of textiles around the planet, for use in clothing, upholstery, blankets and the like: all products that are essentials of comfort in life.
Here's the story on their sustainability.
Bamboo:
• Is 100-per-cent naturally grown, without assistance from man.
• Thrives naturally without using any pesticides or fertilizers
• Is 100-per-cent biodegradable
• As the fastest growing plant in the world, grows to its maximum height in about three months and reaches maturity in 3-4 years. It spreads rapidly across large areas. Because of this, bamboo is known to improve soil quality in degraded and eroded areas of land.
• As a grass, bamboo is cut, not uprooted, also helping soil stability. Bamboo also can grow on hill slopes where nothing else is viable.
• The amount of product from an acre of bamboo is 10 times greater than the yield from cotton. In an age where land use is under enormous pressure this is huge.
• The water requirement for bamboo is minute, mainly just from what falls. This is minute compared with cotton, whose water requirement per shirt’s-worth is huge.
• Because Bamboo retains many of the properties it has as a plant (highly water absorbent, able to absorb three times its weight in water) it has an excellent wicking ability that will pull moisture away from the skin so it can evaporate. For this reason, clothing made of bamboo fibre is often worn next to the skin.
Hemp:
• A term reserved for low tetrahydrocannabinol varieties of the plant Cannabis sativa. Of about 2,000 cannabis plants varieties known, about 90 per cent contain only low-grade THC and are most useful for their fibre, seeds and medicinal or psychoactive oils. Hemp is one of the earliest domesticated plants known.
• Hemp is used for industrial purposes including paper, textiles, clothing, biodegradable plastics, construction (as with Hemcrete and insulation), body products, health food and bio-fuel. Hemp is legally grown in many countries across the world including Spain, China, Japan, Korea, France, North Africa and Ireland.
• Hemp is one of the faster growing biomasses known,producing up to 25 tonnes of dry matter per hectare per year. About one tonne of bast fibre and 2–3 tonnes of core material can be decorticated from 3–4 tonnes of good quality, dry retted straw.
• Hemp is environmentally friendly, requiring few pesticides and no herbicides. It has been called a carbon-negative raw material.
Hugh Lakeland, a mechanic and service station owner by trade looks over some of his 10 acres of commercial hemp. Lakeland was one of the first to obtain a license to cultivate hemp in B.C. from Health Canada. Paper, textiles and building materials come from the fibre and the seeds are produced for oil and food products.
Hemp heads to the altar with this wedding dress with lace cap sleeves and detailing by Vancouver’s Patricia Nayel as part of her sustainable line called Pure Magnolia.
From Red Jade of Lucienne, a grey stretch jersey wrap dress is made entirely of hemp.
Saskatchewan company Hemptown produces shirts and rope.
A chair is reupholstered in Polish hemp fabric and brought back to life by custom design and Vancouver upholsterer Maryanne Danylchuk.
Hemp scarf from Oshun Spirit is both warm and fashionable.
Vintage silk scarf quilt by Ouno Design contains 100-per-cent hemp backing
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