Green.Org sat down with founder of MIRRECO, Richard Evans, to talk about the future of hemp as a tool for carbon sequestration.

I am an award-winning professional with 33+ years’ experience in business, construction and project management, always learning and often bringing solid ideas to fruition. I cherish working alongside other forward thinking individuals and am highly driven, focused and visionary. With an unrivalled passion for sustainability and innovation, I can work autonomously or in a team environment & is able to communicate, negotiate, plan, manage & execute with natural ability. A member of the Chartered Institute of Building, a Chartered Construction Manager and qualified beyond degree level, I founded MIRRECO™ on the basis of making a positive difference by commercialising sustainable technologies on a grand scale.

An avid football (soccer) fan, following my beloved team Liverpool FC in England, I’ve watched just about every game that they’ve played in, for over 30 years.

In a world of global warming caused by our reliance on fossil fuels, there’s urgent need to find sustainable solutions and reduce carbon emissions. Fail to do so and the future looks decidedly bleak for the planet, for the human population and other species we share it with. Climate Change is the greatest threat and challenge the human race has ever faced — it requires momentous and immediate action. Recalling the severity of weather events brought about by global warming in recent news headlines such as the severe fires in California & Australia, the rapid melting of the polar ice caps, flooding, rising water levels and more, an urgent reduction in global carbon emissions to suppress rising temperatures is necessary and pressing. Dynamic climate events affect everyone regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances, affiliations, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. I predicted ‘climate wars’ sometime ago, and right now the awful attack in Ukraine is shifting, amongst other things, global energy security.

I envisage displacement of many current ‘synthetic’ practices and products that are mostly formed from fossil based, intensive energy sources. Successful hemp crops can yield the natural worlds strongest fiber, whilst drawing down (sequestering) CO2 in abundance. We’ve been involved in a crop that was harvested in 79 days from seed – by comparison, the fastest (softwood) tress can take 15+ years and we all know that cutting down trees typically, isn’t good. Over time, hemp will hold it’s place at the ‘climate table’, and we’ll be pushing the chair from behind. With hemp as the vehicle, carbon (CO2) is the driver.

Change their behaviours, attitude, even lifestyle. Consume less. Also look beyond the mainstream narrative that is often designed to lure us down a destructive path, driven by money, power and the greed of the few.