Of hemp’s many uses, one of the most promising could be in construction
Writer Nate Berg , sourced from Ensia under the terms of Creative Commons’ Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license. “Hempcrete,” made from the woody core of hemp, is showing promise as an environmentally friendly building material. October 6, 2020 — It has become almost a cliché to discuss the benefits of hemp, the supposed wonder plant with almost endless uses — from woven fibers to edible seeds to bioplastics. “Of course, hemp is that magic crop that does everything,” says Nicholas Carter, an environmental researcher who, along with Tushar Mehta, a Toronto-based doctor, runs the website Plant Based Data. His work involves reading through scientific papers and studies and summarizing the most important work supporting plants as a source of food and other important uses. Given the hype, Carter wondered just how much power hemp really had. “I wanted to see the research out there on it, to see what’s actually real, what’s…