From Field To Compost: French Firm Develops Hemp Face Masks
LEZINNES, France: In a manufacturing facility in rural France, a laser cuts via a hemp canvas at the manufacturing line of what the producer says is Europe’s first compostable face masks.
Geochanvre pitches the hemp mask with the intention to scale back plastic waste throughout the coronavirus pandemic from single-use protecting tools that environmentalists say will take centuries to decompose and is polluting the oceans.
“It’s heresy to not ban polyethylene merchandise, fabrics which might be shipped to all corners of the arena. Use native agricultural fabrics,” Frédéric Roure, founding president of Geochanvre, advised Reuters TV.
“This can be a herbal product and can return into the soil.”
The masks’s lining features a corn mix for convenience and the elastic band is recyclable.
Bales of hemp fibre are handed via compressors and over rollers ahead of rising on the finish of the road as hard-packed flat sheets, able to be minimize into form and folded by means of hand.
Consumers, most commonly from Europe and Canada, have thus far purchased 1.five million of the hemp mask since March.
International, an estimated 129 billion disposable face mask and 65 billion gloves are used each and every month, in step with a learn about within the magazine Environmental Science and Generation.
Maximum single-use protecting tools is produced from plastics together with polypropylene, polythene and vinyl.
Disposable plastic mask that finally end up within the oceans may just take as much as 450 years to decompose, in step with marketing campaign workforce Waste Unfastened Oceans.
Biodegradable and compostable face mask, produced from fabrics comparable to hemp or wooden fibres, are being made or evolved around the globe.
