[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Bamboo...how about hemp

[YankeePerm at aol.com]

Actually, in the late 1950s, when I was a teenage information specialist for 
USDA's Agricultural Research Service, I had reason to write up some articles 
on research (from the Southern Plant Utilization Station, since abandoned as 
too useful for government work) on using bamboo for paper.   Bamboo paper is 
extremely high quality, which to my way of thinking means the fiber could be 
mixed with recycled paper to make an acceptable product, extending the number of 
cycles over which the material can be remanufactured.   Being a woody material, 
less changeover of paper factories would be required processing bamboo into 
paper, as compared to hemp, or an even better material, banana.  (Bananas must 
be cut to harvest the fruit anyway.)   Since around 1980 I proposed using 
plantation banana waste for paper and in the 1990s the Japanese (of course) 
actually worked out the process and built the factories.   The proponents of hemp 
and other herbaceous fiber plants, aside from suspect motivation, rarely 
consider the capital cost of retooling for a drastically different feedstock.   One 
also wonders if the perfectly good cropland need to produce these feedstocks 
would not be better put to growing food.   After, all, a population several 
times that of North America, from Mexico to Canada, is chronically hungry, and far 
too many desperately undernourished, in danger of death as a result (usually 
from illness that attacks the weakened person.)

Dan Hemenway

In a message dated 2/9/07 11:53:25 AM, LLile at projsolco.com writes:


> Yeah, except for the baggage.....
> 
> "Yup, I'm doin' 10-20 for having a rope farm." 
> 
> Industrial hemp would be an ideal crop to make paper out of, if our
> nation's laws were written rationally instead of in response to
> hysteria.  
> 
> Lawrence Lile, P.E., LEED AP
> 





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