The Hills Hemp Revolution
For our latest Hemp Release, we collaborated with local legends & eco-friends, Balanced Earth, to bring greater awareness to the miracle that hemp is and it's many, many benefits.
Hemp has had a long road to success, with a long way to go still. From being one of the first plants to be spun into a usable fibre 10,000 years ago, to being one of the most misconstrued plants in the world today.
The fashion industry itself is one of the planet’s bigger offenders of using plastics and pesticides with unsustainable processes and materials, so we set out with our mates to aid in killing the negative stigma surrounding hemp and in turn help the greater audience accept the miracle that hemp is!
Travelling to a secret location, we arrived at a hemp field cultivated by Balanced Earth entirely for industrial hemp use. On top of being used for clothing and industrial textiles, hemp can also be used to create building materials, car parts, paper (which is stronger, naturally acid-free and doesn’t yellow as quickly as tree pulp based paper), personal hygiene products and healthier foods. One acre of hemp produces twice as much oil as one acre of peanuts, and almost four times as much fibre pulp as an acre of trees. Able to be grown without pesticides, it takes within 120 days to harvest and is resistant to rot and abrasion making it one of the strongest, fastest growing plant fibres in the world.
Fun fact on hemp foods: the Australian government only legalised hemp foods in 2017, even though the trace amount of THC in hemp is so low it couldn’t get you high if you tried. You’ll just end up with a sweet ol' migraine.
Balanced Earth use their hemp specifically to create Hempcrete: a durable, healthier option for insulation and building. Hempcrete is not just carbon-neutral, it’s actually carbon-negative. This means it literally filters the carbon dioxide out of the air. Recently winning awards for their sustainable efforts and eco-friendly buildings, Balanced Earth's aim is to make hemp commonplace in the building industry and inspire a shift towards making it accepted by the mainstream, which we back all the way! By using Hempcrete as a building material, the air you breathe is cleaner and more carbon is taken out of the atmosphere, and by simply planting hemp you'll start purifying the soil naturally as well as kill unwanted weeds. It’s also mould resistant and buffers temperature and humidity. Shit aye?!?
Despite being used to make the first bibles, the very first American flag, the first drafts of the American constitution and even being used to pay bills in America from 1631 until the early 1800s, the miracle of hemp was widely forgotten and abandoned when a campaign spearheaded by Richard Nixon and Harry J. Anslinger portrayed anti-hemp propaganda to make hemp and marijuana illegal for their own private agenda and political profit. Unfortunately, that stigma still lingers today and put hemp cultivation and understanding back into the dark ages, with so many people still unaware of the benefits.
With our good mates Zoe Cross and Zac Miguel, we took our new range of eco-friendly Hemp Clothing to the Balanced Earth Hemp Field for a shoot we won't soon forget. The vibes were high, the beer's were cold and the clothes? Sustainable.
Words by AFENDS
Models: Zoe Cross & Zac Miguel – @crossandbone @zacmiguel
Photography: Reece Hjorth – @pepthesheltie
Videography: Jellan Merlant-Pilonchery – @clash.studio
Song: Fever by Sunrose – @sunrosemusic
Learn more about our friends Balanced Earth.
