Old Solutions to New Problems – Building with Hemp



Highly sustainable, cost effective and with competitive properties, hemp building was at one point, a staple of the global construction industry. After nearly 100 years of hibernation it has emerged again, and is providing a one of a kind remedy to the health and environmental problems plaguing the industry. In this presentation we will explore…
-Why is Hemp Special?
-What is hempcrete and how can hemp fiber be used in construction?
-What are the bottlenecks to mainstream implementation?
-Why is Hemp critical for sustainable development?
-What does the post CBD landscape for hemp look like?

Presenter, Alex Escher, is a hemp industry veteran with several years of hands-on experience in the hemp space – from CBD to Fiber.

He is the Director of Hemp Development at Escher Design Inc., founder of Hemp Hollow Processing, LLC and Regional Leader for the US Hemp Building Association, where he serves on the hempcrete certification team tasked with drafting testing standards to pave the way for mainstream implementation of hempcrete in the US construction sector.

An entrepreneur with a keen eye for disruptive industries, Alex became intrigued with the far reaching possibilities of hemp fiber composites for the building sector. He joined the Vermont based architecture firm, Escher Design, to help develop cost effective applications using hemp bio-composites. In 2017, the firm received national attention for building the first permitted hempcrete structure in Denver, Colorado. The building continues to serve as proof-of-concept for hemp applications in the residential home market. Projects are currently underway in Vermont, Denver, Missouri and New York State.

Founded in 2020, Hemp Hollow Processing, LLC was created to fill a void in the Vermont and New York CBD smokable flower market. Alex’s prescient read of the marketplace proved to be correct and by the fall of 2020 Hemp Hollow was poised to respond to the urgent needs of farmers ready to process their newly planted CBD crop. Hemp Hollow evolved as one one of the few independent companies in the northeast to offer mobile trimming and bucking services for CBD smokable flower.

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