Cannabis Sativa
or Industrial Hemp Information

• More comprehensive hemp info covering all uses of hemp
• Hemp is the highest source of essential fatty acids in the plant kingdom

• The fast growing hemp plant is naturally inhospitable to pests and thrives with minimal use of chemical pesticides or fertilizers.
  
• Hemp has taproots 9 to 14 feet long, bringing subsoil nutrients to the surface and proteting the soil from erosion.
  
• Hemp fabric has four times the tensile strength and twice the abrasion resistance of cotton.
  
• Hemp fabric is similar in texture to linen or raw silk and possesses a soft hand, or feel.
  
• Hemp processing and manufacturing steps are also less enironmentally taxing than those of many other fibres (notably cotton), requiring less toxic chemicals and dyes to creat finished fabric.
  
• Cotton crops use 53 million pounds of pesticides and 1.6 billion pounds of synthetic fertilizers each year. These toxic cheicals are destroying farmland and findinng their way into food and water. (Source: Inc. Magazine, May 1999, pg 29-32).
  
• The cotton used to creat one 100% cotton t-shirt requires 1/3 lb of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to grow. (Source: Sustainable Cotton Project, USA)
  
• Hemp is naturally resistant to UV light (meaning you need less sunscreen), mold, mildew and salt water.
  

Archaeologists have uncovered hemp fabric in China that is more than 10,000 years old.

Hemp Footwear

Hemp is one of the world's foremost renewable resources and has a long and impressive list of attributes. It grows successfully without the use of chemical pesticides or fertilizers. Where other crops rob the soil of nutrients, hemp actually replaces them, making it an excellent rotation crop. It is the strongest vegetable fiber grown and the most versatile - used for thousands of years to produce fabrics, paper, ropes and food.

Our Original Hemp Sandal has been the inspiration for everything that has followed. Like all our sandals, the Original is hand-sewn from hemp and has a patented sole that uniquely conforms to the foot.

A revolution in footwear - natural hemp comfort.

In 1997, the company added a knitwear line, introducing the first ever 100% hemp sweater as well as exotic blends with hemp, Tibetan yak's fleece and Mongolian camel hair.

EcoDragon supports traditional farming and handicraft techniques from our manufacturing base near the beginning of the ledgendary Silk Road. There, farmers have grown and worked with hemp for thousands of years, organically and sustainably. As the 3rd world economy struggles to catch up with Western industrial nations, pollution has become an all too frequent by-product. EcoDragon, however, creates a valuable export that provides a significant boon to the local economy, without adding more toxins to the environment. We are also ever conscious of fair labor practices and never use child labor or sweatshops, and this is written into our contracts.

Founded in this global spirit and tradition, EcoDragon creates natural products for a new millennium from organic thinking, sustainable land practices, compassion towards others and giving back to our community - from our home in New England to our work in Tibet.

EcoDragon and China

Eric and Wes Crain began creating EcoDragon as a fusion of their deep family roots in China and their desire to establish a progressive business. The result is a natural apparel company with strong connections to China built on fair trade, environmentally sustainable practices and respect for the historical culture. Today, EcoDragon is a model for global social responsibility in trade. From community empowerment to ecological standards, EcoDragon is pioneering an alternative, better way of doing business in the international economy.The seeds of EcoDragon's current business in China were planted at home for Eric and Wes.  Their parents were some of the first American travelers to China in 1975, at the end of the Cultural Revolution. "Our house was always filled with visiting Chinese professors and artists," recalls Eric. "Both of us traveled to Asia on trips where we experienced Eastern traditions at an early age," adds Wes.

Another important early influence was also local: Helen Snow returned to the Crain¹s hometown with husband Edgar Snow, author of Red Star over China, his tale of the 1930s revolution in China. "Helen told us fascinating history, from the forming of a new country to helping establish the Gung Ho cooperatives." says Eric. ³Her vision and tireless work on behalf of building mutual understanding was an inspiration. ³The heart of EcoDragon¹s connection with China is Xi-an, the ancient capital where 7,000 life-sized terra cotta warriors wearing hemp-soled shoes and protecting the tomb of emperor Qin Shi Huang were recently discovered. Xi-an is the gateway to the ancient Silk Road, the major trade route to the West and also the agricultural region that has traditionally grown hemp. Hemp has a rich history in China, dating thousands of years. EcoDragon has adopted this sustainable tradition of organic farming and indigenous skills of processing the fiber to develop our products.

The combination of family history, personal interest in Chinese traditions, and the wish to promote positive Sino-American exchange is why EcoDragon does business with China. "We are creating a progressive model for global business trade that offers an alternative to the usual approach," explain Eric and Wes. "Our fair trade principles and high environmental standards guide the way we do business in China. Add to this our knowledge of and respect for Chinese culture, and EcoDragon is able to positively impact this important trade relationship as a truly socially responsible company."

all about Hemp Foods

Hemp: Nature’s Forgotten Nutraceutical
(Courtesy of Fresh Hemp Foods)
Darrell L. Tanelian, M.D., Ph.D.

That the hemp plant (Cannabis sativa) is used as food initially surprises and confuses most people. The public information system has largely restricted knowledge of hemp to its use for obtaining marijuana (Cannabis sativa), with its leaf content of the psychoactive substance delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), rope and cloth from the fiber of the plant, and paper from the plant stalk. Yet both the oldest Chinese agricultural treatise, the Xia Xiao Zheng, written in the 16th century BC, and other Chinese records discuss hemp as one of the major grain crops grown in ancient China.1,2

Besides its propagation in China, the cultivation and use of hemp has, since the beginnings of recorded history, also been documented by many other great civilizations, including: India, Sumeria, Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, and other nations of the Near East; and the Aztec and Mayan civilizations of South America; as well as by native cultures in North America and Europe. Indeed, it might be said that over these thousands of years, hemp has always followed humankind throughout the world, or vice versa.

Nutritionally, the key point about hemp is that its edible portion--the meat of the shelled seed--resembles the seeds of other cultivated grains including wheat and rye, and does not contain THC.

Moreover, the strains of hemp plant used for food have been naturally selected so as to produce little THC, generally. These nutritional varieties of hemp plant grow in temperate climates to heights of 14 feet, and as with many agricultural grains, their seeds can be harvested in a conventional manner with a combine. Since the most modern handling and shelling of the seed minimize its contact with leaf resins, the shelled seed itself and the oil, nut butter, and other foods prepared from the seed have been made with THC concentrations as low as 1 ucg/g (ppm) to nondetectible. These modern hemp products, when consumed in normally recommended amounts, should all but eliminate positive urine tests for THC.3 Studies conducted on older versions of hemp seed oil found some to contain THC concentrations that resulted in positive urine tests.

Nutrients in Hemp Seed

The most basic hemp seed product is the shelled seed, sometimes referred to as the "hemp seed nut." The other major hemp food products are hemp seed nut butter, which resembles peanut and other nut butters, and cold-pressed hemp seed oil and hemp seed flour. These basic products can be consumed alone or used along with or instead of other grains, seeds, nuts, and oils in any appropriate recipe.

In terms of its nutrient content, shelled hemp seed is 34.6% protein, 46.5% fat, and 11.6% carbohydrate (Table I). The most important feature of hemp seed is that it provides both of the essential fatty acids (EFAs) needed in the human diet--linoleic and alpha-linolenic acid--as well as a complete and balanced complement of all essential amino acids.

Hemp Fats

As compared with most nuts and seeds, the 46.5% fat content of shelled hemp seed is relatively low, and hemp food products have a low cholesterol content and high content of the natural phytosterols that reduce cholesterol levels. Hemp seed oil has on average the highest mono- and polyunsaturated fat content of all oils, taken collectively, of 89% (Table 2). The polyunsaturated linoleic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid, is present in hemp seed oil in a content of 55.6 g/100 g, and alpha-linolenic acid, a polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acid, is present at 17.2 g/100 g. The ratio of the two EFAs is 3.38, closely approximating the 4.0 average ratio recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), Sweden and Japan for the human diet.5

Conveniently, hemp seed oil is also one of the only food oils to contain the direct metabolites of linoleic and alpha-linolenic acid--gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) and stearidonic acid (SDA), respectively. Because of this, it can circumvent the impaired EFA metabolism and physical compromise that can result from genetic factors, intake of other fats, aging, and lifestyle patterns.

By contrast with unsaturated fat, only 6.6% of the total calories in shelled hemp seed come from saturated fat--a percentage that contrasts sharply with the 13 to 14% of saturated fat calories in the modern American diet.6 This gives hemp seed oil a polyunsaturated-to-saturated fat ratio of 9.7, in comparison to the current ratio of 0.44 in the American diet,6 and indicates that consuming even a small portion of hemp seed oil daily can contribute strongly to bringing this dietary imbalance back toward the U.S. Senate Select Committee recommended goal of 1.0.

Hemp Protein

Besides providing the human EFAs and having a favorable unsaturated-to-saturated fat ratio, hemp seed is an excellent dietary source of easily digestible, gluten-free protein. Its overall protein content of 34.6 g/100 g is comparable to that of soy beans and better than that found in nuts, other seeds, dairy products, meat, fish, or poultry.

Hemp protein provides a well-balanced array of the 10 essential amino acids for humans. An important aspect of hemp seed protein is a high content of arginine (123 mg/g protein) and histidine (27 mg/g protein), both of which are important for growth during childhood, and of the sulfur-containing amino acids methionine (23 mg/g protein) and cysteine (16 mg/g protein), which are needed for proper enzyme formation. Hemp protein also contains relatively high levels of the branched-chain amino acids that are important for the metabolism of exercising muscle.

Other Hemp Nutrients

The carbohydrate content of shelled hemp seed is 11.5% and its sugar content is 2%. Of the shelled hemp seed carbohydrate, 6% is in the form of fiber. The fiber content of hemp seed flour is 40%, which is the highest of all commercial flour grains. In addition to containing the basic human nutrient groups, hemp foods have a high content of antioxidants (92.1 mg/100g) in the form of alpha-, beta-, gamma-, and delta-tocopherol and alpha-tocotrienol. Additionally, hemp seed contains a wide variety of other vitamins and minerals.

Hemp in Health and Disease Prevention

The high content of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, and the relatively high phytosterol content of hemp foods, make them beneficial to cardiovascular health.7 Numerous human and animal studies have shown that substitution of polyunsaturated for saturated fats can reduce the risk of sudden cardiac arrest 8 and fatal cardiac arrhythmia,9 as well as reducing blood cholesterol levels and decreasing the cellular proliferation associated with atherosclerosis.10 A high polyunsaturated-to-saturated fat ratio, especially when it includes linoleic acid, has also been positively associated with reduced arterial thrombosis.11 Additionally, phytosterols, of which hemp seed contains 438 mg/100g, have been shown to reduce total serum cholesterol by an average of 10% and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol by an average of 13%.12

Polyunsaturated fatty acids, and especially GLA, have also been found beneficial in treating various human cancers,13-17 and studies have shown that phytosterols may offer protection against colon, breast, and prostate cancers.18

Besides the importance of a proper dietary ratio of linoleic to alpha-linolenic acid in maintaining the polyunsaturated fatty acid composition of neuronal and glial membranes,19 membrane loss of polyunsaturated fatty acids has been found in such neurodegenerative disorders as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, and it has been suggested that a diet with a proper balance of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids may help delay or reduce the neurologic effects of these diseases.20 A fatty acid preparation with a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids of 4, which is practically identical to that in hemp oil, has been shown to improve the quality of life of Alzheimer’s disease patients.21

Additionally, GLA has been found effective for treating rheumatoid arthritis and active synovitis,22-24 and the GLA and vitamin D content of hemp foods may make them beneficial in preventing and treating osteoporosis.25 Moreover, supplementation with products containing EFAs has been found capable of reversing scaly skin disorder, inflammation, excessive epidermal water loss, itch, and poor wound healing caused by EFA deficiency,26 and GLA has been shown to be beneficial for atopic eczema and psoriasis.27

Among food products made from hemp seed, oil, and flour are beer, pasta, cheese, cookies, waffles, granola, candy, ice cream, and others, with new products now being regularly developed.

In short, hemp can constitute an important element in nutrition, health, and cosmetics, with the prospect of playing a major role in preventing disease and reducing health care expenditures.

Hemp Paper: Frequently Asked Questions

What is Tree-Free paper?
Tree-Free paper is best defined as paper made wholly from agricultural crops ans well as paper that is made without cutting new trees.

What are nonwoods?
Nonwoods are pulps derived from agricultural crops. Nonwood paper is made wholly from agricultural crops or blends of nonwoods with post-consumer waste fibre. Since post-consumer fibre is nowadays mostly tree material, the term tree-free can be somewhat misleading here even though no trees were cut. Nonwood paper contains no virgin tree material.

What is post-consumer waste?
Post-consumer waste is used paper material. This can come in many forms but mostly comes in corrugated boxes, newsprint and office paper. Post-consumer waste is mostly tree fibre these days but as time goes on, (hopefully) more and more of that material will contain agricultural fibre too. Post-consumer waste fibre is generally of lower quality due to multiple processing and is also inconsistent in quality and strength. Since the reprocessing of this material is uses a lot of energy (transport, storage and repulping) it is very important to reuse first, then recycle.

What does recycled paper really mean?
It is very important to qualify what is meant by recycled because there is no regulatory body governing the use of this term. It is not uncommon to find papers that are 50% or more virgin tree labeled 'recycled.' This is misleading to say the least and most people happily accept recycled paper as environmentally friendly even though it can be mostly (or even partially) old growth!! Because recycled fibre weakens upon repulping and because the source is unknown or varied, virgin fibre is almost always added to guarantee a certain level of quality and durability.

What nonwood fibres are used in papermaking?
Nonwood fibres can generally be categorized under two headings:
1) Fibre Crops
2) Agricultural Residues

Fibre crops are farmed specifically for their fibre. Literally thousands of fibre crops can be grown in Canada and make great paper! Some crops like hemp and flax are ideal papermaking fibres because of their unique strength and bonding properties.

Agricultural residues are "waste" products derived from food crops such as wheat and corn. The leftover material was until recently burned and is now mostly landfilled. Some agricultural residues are weaker fibres but still can make great paper. These agricultural residues are available in vast quantities in Canada.

What about quality?
Nonwood papers are far less of a burden to the earth and do not compromise quality like recycled paper can. Many nonwood fibres have always been used by the pulp and paper industry to create specialty grades of paper such as currency, cigarette papers, bible papers and art papers. These fibres have superior bonding quality and strength properties which is why your money didn't disintegrate in the washing machine.

Still not convinced?
Nonwood fibres contain far less lignin (natural glues) than tree fibre and therefore require far less processing chemicals for pulping and bleaching. They are naturally acid free meaning the paper will last forever without yellowing or crumbling. Since many nonwoods are stronger than tree fibre, they can be recycled more times and they add durability and integrity to recycled sheets.

Why then are we using trees for paper?
Tree fibre is cheap. Really cheap. The cost of building the forest is of course not incorporated into the cost of the fibre.

Do nonwoods cost more?
Yes and no. Nonwood paper is more expensive for regular commodity papers but the cheapest photocopy paper available is after all 100% old growth. However when looking for a quality sheet (either environmental quality or the feel of the paper) nonwoods are comparable in price. The GreenMan Nonwood Papermill carries only papers that are made without the use of any trees in an effort to reduce the demands placed on our remaining forests.

It is the goal of the GreenMan Nonwood Papermill to separate the pulp and paper industry from the forest industry. Currently they are one and the same but the pulp and paper industry should be able to draw fibre from a variety of sources integrating a bioregionalist approach and choosing the most sustainable sources of fibre for each region, product and application.

Hemp Paper
(Courtesy of Westhemp Canada)

The following explains what is needed to process a fibre source into paper (Smook 1982):
Pulping (from fibre source to pulp):
* Cleaning: all non-fibrous components need to be removed from the raw material, and the remaining fibers must be cleaned of dirt, rocks and other contaminants.
* Fiberizing: the elementary fibers are taken apart by either chemically removing the glue that holds them together, or mechanically tearing the fibre structure apart. From this step on, the material is referred to as "pulp".
* Cutting: especially hemp fibers are too long to give a homogeneous paper sheet, so the fibers have to be cut to the right size.
* Classification: the fibers suitable for use in paper are separated from the ones too short, too long, too wide, too thin, too crooked, too dirty and too old. Fibers can be classified by weight (centrifugal and gravitational processes) and size (various sieving processes).
* Bleaching: optionally, the suitable fibbers may be bleached to a higher "whiteness". The whiter a sheet, the better the contrast with the ink. Old-style pulp mills use chlorine compounds with hazardous side-effects. Modern pulp mills use oxygen-based b leaching (compounds like oxygen, ozone and peroxide). Hemp pulp can be bleached with relatively harmless hydrogen peroxide. For some applications bleaching is not required, for instance for packaging paper and board.
* Refining: this is a separate process step in which the fibre surfaces are "roughened". The greater surface roughness of a fibre, the better it adheres to other fibers in the paper sheet and the greater the strength of the paper. Paper making (from pulp to paper):
* Dilution: in order to lay the fibers evenly into a homogeneous sheet, the pulp is diluted with large amounts of water (sometimes up to 200 times as much water as fibre pulp).
* Formation: the fibre-water slurry is poured on a fine mesh wire. Most of the water will fall through the wire, leaving the fibers to settle into a flat sheet.
* Drying: in the next steps, the wet sheet is dried by subsequent pressing and steam heating.
* Sheeting: finally, the formed sheet is cut to the required size.

These processes are essentially the same for manual paper making and for modern paper machines, with the difference that the old paper maker put out one handmade sheet per minute, and the state-of-the-art Fourdrinier newsprint paper machine puts out 15,00 0 square meters a minute: a 10 meter wide sheet at 90 kilometers an hour! Remainders of the hemp pulp industry Although there are thousands of non-wood paper mills in the world, only a few of them use hemp as a fibre source. At present 23 paper mills use hemp fibre, at an estimated world production volume of 120,000 tons per annum. Most of the mills are located in China and India, and produce moderate quality printing and writing paper. Typically, these mills do not really have a fixed source of fibre, but they simply use whatever can be found in the region. About 10 of the mills are located in the western world ( US, UK, France, Spain, eastern Europe, Turkey), and these mills produce so-called specialty papers such as:
* cigarette paper: even popular American cigarette brands have a 50% hemp cigarette paper and filter. Some countries still have legislation prescribing the use of hemp in cigarette paper, because other fibers (like spruce) generate hazardous fumes w hen incinerated (!).
* filter paper (for technical and scientific uses)
* coffee filters, tea bags
* specialty non wovens
* insulating papers (for electrical condensations)
* grease proof papers
* security papers
* various specialty art papers

These papers can generally only be produced from special fibers like hemp, flax, cotton and other non-wood fibre sources. The average hemp pulp and paper mill produces around 5000 tons per annum. This should be compared to a -normal pulp mill for wood fibre, which is never smaller than 250,000 tons per annum. The only reason the remaining mills can still produce at this extremely small size is that there is a very special use for the pulp. This partly explains the high price for a hemp pulp: about US $25 00 per ton versus about US $400 for a typical bleached wood pulp. The remaining mills in the western world are unable to cope with western environmental regulations because of their small size and archaic technology. Some mills survive by shipping their waste water to a large wood pulp mill nearby, others have to close down. There is a clear shift in capacity towards countries that do not as yet take environmental problems very seriously. One reason for the high price of hemp pulp is the inefficient pulping processes used. Another reason is that hemp is harvested once a year (during August) and needs to be stored to feed the mill the whole year through. This storage requires a lot of (mostly manual) handling of the bulky stalk bundles, which accounts for a high raw material cost.
Classical pulping technology
Most mills predominantly process the long hemp bast fibers, which arrive as bales of cleaned ribbon from preprocessing plants located near the cultivation areas. The bales are opened and fed into a spherical tank, called a digester. Water is added (5 to 1 0 times the fibre weight), together with the cooking chemicals to remove the "glue" components lignin and pectin from the fibers. Most mills use sodium hydroxide and sulphur cocktails.The fibers are cooked for several hours (sometimes up to eight hours) at elevated temperature and pressure, until all fibers are separated from each other. After cooking, the cooking chemicals and the extracted binding components are separated from the fibers by washing with excess water. This is where most of the polluting waste emerges from the process. Often wastes are discharged as such into the local surface water. The remaining clean fibers are then fed into a Hollander beater, which is best compared to an industrial size bathtub, with a large wheel revolving around a horizontal axis at one point in the tub. The wheel pumps the pulp round and round, and meanwhile cuts the fibres to the right length, and also gives the fibres the required surface roughness for better bonding capacity. This beating goes on for up to twelve hours per batch. Some mills add bleaching chemicals in this beating process, other mills pass t he pulp from the beating machines to separate tanks for bleaching. These separate bleaching treatments often use chlorine compounds, which are also discharged into the environment. The bleached pulp is then ready to be pumped to the paper machine, or can be pressed to a dryness suitable for transportation to a paper mill elsewhere. The processing time of more than twenty hours make this process very expensive, as the costly equipment and handling must be depreciated over a very low throughput.
Necessity for new technology
New applications for hemp as a paper making raw material require a new pulping technology which must be able to use hemp from wet storage. Some new technologies have been developed, albeit in laboratory or on pilot scale.
References
*Abel E.L. 1980. Marihuana, the first twelve thousand years.Plenum press, New York, 289 pp.
*Conrad C., 1993. Hemp, lifeline to the future. Creative Xpressions Publishing, Los Angeles, California.
* FAO 1991. The outlook for pulp and paper to 1995. Paper products, and industrial update. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Rome.
* Hunter, D. 1957. Paper making, the history and technique of an ancient craft. 2nd Ed. Albert A. Knopf
* Smook G.A. 1982. Handbook for pulp & paper technologists. 2nd Ed. Angus Wilde Publications, Vancouver, B.C.
*Temple R.K.C, 1986. China, land of discovery and invention. Patrick Stevens Ltd., United Kingdom.
*Gertjan van Roekel jr. ATO-DLO Agro-technology, P.O.box 17, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands
* Van Roekel, G J, 1994. Hemp pulp and paper production. Journal of the International Hemp Association 1: 12-14.