Caduceus Mercurius
Holofractale de l'hypervérité
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- 14/7/07
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Ultimate green machine: a car made of hemp
CAR buyers who suspect they have parted with money for old rope may soon be right. Ministers are to spend more than £500,000 in an attempt to develop the world’s first recyclable vehicle made from hemp.
A deal between Defra, the environment department, Ford, the car manufacturer, and Hemcore, which grows plants closely related to the ones that produce cannabis, could see hemp being used as the basis for a wide range of components.
The fibrous qualities of their stalks means they can be used to make clothes, paper and ropes.
Defra’s funding is being used to create new materials based on fibres from hemp and other plants such as flax and willow, to replace metals and oil-based plastics. The fibres are blended with polypropylene and the resulting mixture can then be moulded into whatever shape is required.
The hope is to make car manufacture more sustainable. Such materials would be easy to recycle for use in successive generations of vehicles.
“We hope this could become a sustainable way of replacing metals, glass fibre and plastic in making new cars,
CAR buyers who suspect they have parted with money for old rope may soon be right. Ministers are to spend more than £500,000 in an attempt to develop the world’s first recyclable vehicle made from hemp.
A deal between Defra, the environment department, Ford, the car manufacturer, and Hemcore, which grows plants closely related to the ones that produce cannabis, could see hemp being used as the basis for a wide range of components.
The fibrous qualities of their stalks means they can be used to make clothes, paper and ropes.
Defra’s funding is being used to create new materials based on fibres from hemp and other plants such as flax and willow, to replace metals and oil-based plastics. The fibres are blended with polypropylene and the resulting mixture can then be moulded into whatever shape is required.
The hope is to make car manufacture more sustainable. Such materials would be easy to recycle for use in successive generations of vehicles.
“We hope this could become a sustainable way of replacing metals, glass fibre and plastic in making new cars,
