I’m very excited to announce my new show is up and online! The Hemp Already video series is an episodic docuseries about all things hemp.

It features the innovators disrupting the status quo and helping to save the planet by making products with sustainable and environmentally friendly hemp rather than resource depleting and often toxic traditional materials.

Hemp materials can be used to make tens of thousands of products. Construction materials, paper, plastics, clothing, textiles, biofuels, food, health products and more can all be made from hemp.

The series features the companies and people behind them that are leading the hemp movement.

Watch the first episode and subscribe to the Hemp Already youtube channel.

Why a hemp video series?

Everyone needs to know about hemp. 

Hemp is a sleeping giant and there’s a ton of excitement around the plant. Its renaissance has begun and people are using this miracle plant again to build all kinds of things. I want to bring the stories of these hemp innovators to the world to see!

Hemp is the most versatile, sustainable, renewable, carbon negative, deforestation saving, eco-friendly plant in the world.

It grows in 3-4 months, can grow almost anywhere – wild hemp grows in all 50 states, it uses less water than other crops such as corn or cotton, produces more fiber than cotton and more biomass than corn, doesn’t need herbicides or pesticides (or very little), regenerates the soil and has numerous other benefits. It truly is a miracle plant.

I want people to see there are alternatives to fossil fuels and resource depleting materials that can be used today. We’re not talking about far off, future technologies that may or may not ever come to fruition. Using the hemp plant can help save the environment and create new jobs and change industries right now.

Related: why your company needs a video series.

Related: using natural light for your documentary video production.

Why did the hemp industry die out?

The first use of hemp dates back about 8,000 years ago. Hemp has been used for thousands of years for many products and was one of the largest agricultural crops up until the late 1800’s. Until then, most paper was made from hemp.

With the signing of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, lumping hemp together along with cannabis, it effectively killed the industrial hemp industry.

It’s such an efficient source material for so many things including timber and petroleum based products that it posed a major threat to those industries which played a part in the plants demise – hey, it’s competition so we need to squash it!

Related: No Words, a video poem about nature and our destruction of it.

What can be made from hemp?

There are tens of thousands of products that can be made from the plant instead of the unsustainable, greenhouse gas emitting, toxic and fossil fuel based materials that are being used now.

The list of things that can be made from the hemp plant seem endless: negative carbon construction materials like hempcrete used in residential houses and commercial buildings for walls, ceilings and flooring, hemp insulation, hemp wood, fiberboard, carpets, paints, varnishes, inks. Any paper product can be made from hemp instead of trees.

Supercapacitor batteries (yes batteries!), plastics and bio composites (nearly all European car makers already use it for car parts), biofuel, diapers, mulch, animal bedding, all kinds of clothing (much more environmentally friendly than cotton), rope, canvas, beauty products like soaps, lotions, makeup, nail polish, shampoo and it can feed people and animals with a whole bunch of food products and can help us with our health and wellness with cannabinoid extracts.

This is just a short list of things that can be made from hemp. The Ministry of Hemp lists 82 products being made today from hemp. That’s just the beginning. Some estimate that there are 25,000 products that can be made from it while others estimate 50,000! Whatever the actual number is, its large.

Can you make paper from hemp?

Yes, you most certainly can. There are many benefits of hemp paper over tree paper. Episode 1 features hemp paper company TINY e PAPER CO of Long Beach, California and founder Erica Halverson.

TINY e PAPER CO is a startup that makes hemp paper out of hemp fiber and the left over plant materials or biowaste from CBD extractors.

Their mission is to get the world to switch over from tree to hemp paper, thereby putting a stop to world deforestation. We love people that think big and think you will too.

Be sure to check out episode one of the Hemp Already video series to see what a tiny company that thinks big can do!

Related: Documentary I produced/directed for an offshore project that provides renewable energy to the City of Los Angeles.

About Gate5, my Los Angeles video production company

Gate5 is a creative video agency and full service video production company in Los Angeles producing high quality video content for the web, your social media outlets, kiosks and broadcast television.

We conceptualize, write scripts, secure locations and permits, cast actors, direct, film and edit commercial videos, narrative films, branded content, product and promotional videos, TV commercials, episodic content and live video streaming production.

Click here for Gate5 video samples.

If you have a commercial or a narrative project where you need a director and/or a video production company, feel free to contact me to discuss it to see how if we can work together on it.

Check out my photography here.