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| Looking more like wheat plants than cannabis, hemp is the new harvest for all kinds of green endeavours. |
The Hemp Gazette reports that the BMW Group is looking to slash the carbon emissions of making and using its cars, and hemp may play a larger role.
Like Mercedes-Benz, BMW has been using hemp for some years, for example in the lining of door panels of its electric i3, because of the hemp fibre’s excellent insulating and weight properties.
To achieve its vision to drastically reduce CO2 per vehicle by 2030, BMW aims to increase the use of natural materials over petrochemical ones.
“The BMW Group and its partners have systematically further developed the use of fibres such as hemp, kenaf and flax, providing them with natural fibre lattice structures,” said BMW in a statement.
BMW Group is also using biobased plastics and plastics reinforced with natural fibres such as hemp, cutting down on the use of oil-based primary plastics.
Its aim is to use thermoplastics with an average of 40% recycled material by 2030.
BMW’s overall goal is to reduce the life-cycle CO2 emissions of its vehicles by more than 40% by 2030.
SA weed too good
Growing vast plantations of hemp to export to Europe for industrial use might sound like a good plan to boost rural farming in South Africa, but this has been tried and failed.
The massive decortication plant for flax and hemp that stands mothballed and rusting outside Winterton in the KZN Midlands bears grim testimony to this failure. The plant was supposed to strip the bark off the thin young stems and provide the auto industry with light, bio-material panels, but the plant received “stems like saplings”, according to a caretaker at the plant.
Current talks to revive a hemp industry are meanwhile opposed by growers of cannabis in SA’s “dagga belt”, which stretches from the Eastern Cape to the KZN Midlands.
These growers know that the windblown pollen from hemp, which has bred-in low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), will fertilise their plantations of female plants, weakening local strains that took decades to develop.
Apart from this hemp contamination fear, SA’s hemp is also “too good”, as high altitude and lots of sun naturally deliver THC levels that are much higher than the “increased” 0,3% THC limit for hemp, which the EU Parliament voted into law in April. Which means even if “Suffericans” wanted to grow the tall thin stalks that make for good hemp for export, they will struggle to keep the THC levels below 1%.
