'A roof over our people's heads': the Indigenous US tribe building hempcrete homes [View all]
When Earl Pendleton first heard about building houses out of hemp more than a decade ago, it seemed like a far-fetched idea.
To start, it was still illegal to grow hemp – the non-psychoactive strain of Cannabis sativa – in the US. Importing it from overseas was prohibitively expensive. But Pendleton, a member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community, was intrigued by early research that showed hemp could be transformed into non-toxic construction materials that allow for faster build times and result in low-carbon, energy-efficient houses.
Which was exactly what he saw his tribe needed at the time. Roughly half of the tribal nation’s enrolled members – about 1,120 people – are currently in need of housing. With his encouragement, the community started experimenting with hemp as a housing construction material – also known as hempcrete – back in 2016, even before it was decriminalized in the US. This month, the tribal nation is set to open the first vertically integrated hempcrete facility in the nation, complete with its own growing operation.
When the Lower Sioux’s 20,000-sq-ft, $6.2-m onsite facility opens in April, the tribal nation will become a leader in the growing green building movement.
But the decision to invest in hemp was first born out of the Lower Sioux’s commitment to sovereignty and self-determination. “The whole idea was just to be able to service our own needs, because we’re short at least 150 houses [on the reservation],” said Pendleton.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/hempcrete-indigenous-tribe-minnesota
A very cool idea which could be expanded nationwide, if not worldwide.
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