BP Oil Spill Could be Cleaned up with Hemp
June 22nd, 2010This BP crisis makes me incredibly angry. They’ve barely spent $2 billion on cleanup, and earlier tonight, people donate over $ 1.3 million in two hours to clean up BPs spill.  We spent almost as much as BP on the spill!! At 1.3 million dollars every two hours, we would have raised over $$1.95 billion in the past 63 days!!!
What really makes me mad is all of the things that they could have done but didn’t. For example, I read an article just one week after the disaster on 4/20, that there are microbes that eat oil, and even PRODUCE OXYGEN as a byproduct. This was already tested and verified to be effective, and in fact, there was a company that had a large amount in stock, and if needed, could produce more very quickly. It was the PERFECT answer!! A week later, I read a similar article; apparently that hadn’t actually used it, because they still had more chemical dispersants left, I guess.
I remembered another article I had seen and recovered an even better one. It of course, relates to hemp. Based on the below article, I posit (although it’s never really been tested) that hemp could be used to help clean up the oil disaster.
Hemp’s actually has several long lost cousins. I sometimes think bamboo is a long lost cousin, the two fastest growing land plants used to race each other….Anyways, another distant cousin is the plant crop kenaf.  A fiber crop that can grow on marginal land, kenaf can be used to make twine (although not nearly as strong as hemp), but also can be used for paper products, bio composite materials, and cellulosic ethanol. Kenaf is not actually much unlike hemp without the hempseed.
Here is an interview from a North Carolina farmer, who says that his kenaf could be used to absorb some of the oil. To take it a step further, he says that it will synergize with the microbes and provide even more food for the hungry microbes. The EPA says they will conduct a study…. when they should conduct a study by TRYING IT IMMEDIATELY!!
Hemp could do the exact same thing, but would probably work better.
NC Farmer talks about how hemp could be used to clean up the oil spill