A team of students in Morocco have successfully developed an environmentally sustainable home made almost exclusively from hemp and solar panels.
The building was erected as an entry into the SUNIMPLANT project’s ‘Solar Decathlon’, a competition organized by the United States Department of Energy and Morocco’s Centre de recherche en Energie solaire et Energies nouvelles to encourage construction of solar-powered buildings.
This design is unique and was built from only locally sourced hemp, vegetable-based bio-resins, and other non-synthetic materials found in the region.
“This ‘spaceship’ is advanced in time and reflects a turn not only in North Africa but in hemp construction, which doesn’t have comparable prototypes anywhere in the world.” — Monika Brümmer, German Architect and Project Leader
Monika is also the co-founder of Adrar Nouh, a Spain-based NGO with a focus on using hemp to build environmentally sustainable homes in Morocco’s poor and rural High Rif region.
The spherical home spans 90 square meters (approximately 969 square feet) and features 24 photovoltaic solar panels with a total price tag of only $120,000. The structure actually costs less than half of the most expensive entries in the competition.
According to Brümmer, the building could be optimized even further if hemp-clay boards were installed as internal partitioning walls and floors. Although funding restrictions did partially obstruct their original goal, the home features some interesting innovations such as hemp wool-derived panels which protect the underside of the solar panels against extreme weather conditions, an important inclusion for a region which reaches up to 114°F in the shade during August and September.
Other contestants included students from Morocco’s National School of Architecture and National School of Applied Sciences and the Fraunhofer Center for Silicon Photovoltaics, located in Germany.
Monika’s building offers the opportunity of an entirely off-grid experience, unencumbered by the need for outside electricity while maintaining the comfort of a modern lifestyle.
“The cylindrical envelope of the circular building, with minimal exposure of the 24 exterior panels, gives interior comfort through optimal damping and thermal phase shift, and osmosis of the components in the hempcrete formulation,” said Monika Brümmer, as reported by Hemp Today.
Demand for hemp-based building materials has been high lately, especially as more people learn that ‘hempcrete’ can replace traditional fiberglass, sheetrock, and drywall and offers superior temperature control, flame resistance, and noise reduction.
The product also has the potential to be carbon-neutral, but US-based growers tend to focus on growing hemp for CBD and other compounds instead of hempcrete, which requires taller and more fibrous hemp stalks.
Despite technical difficulties, this Moroccan ‘hemp house’ shows the world that environmentally sustainable construction is possible.
Phillip Schneideris a student as well as a staff writer and assistant editor for Waking Times. If you would like to see more of his work, you can visit his website, or follow him on the free speech social network Minds.
Feels like we’re living on the edge of the edge these days. With all the craziness continuing to seemingly escalate in most parts of our world, shifting life like never before, stress levels are escalating to high levels. It seems we have no sense of what’s real, solid or even simi ‘normal’ anymore, all lines have been crossed and our world has been turned inside out, and upside down, to say the least..
Even my stress levels are being challenged and I run and meditate everyday. However, I noticed still, over this Covid Virus time, while we’ve had to stay indoors everyday, our immune systems became more compromised from the lack of sunshine and freedoms from our outdoorand life connections. What’s compromised and overwhelmed most of us even more is the constant bombardment of so much mis-information, fear and hate…As if CV wasn’t enough to cripple our country. And then came part 2 of this insanity ‘The intentional death of George Floyd, a human, murdered intentionally in our face. How can we take anymore inhumane treatment from those who are ruling our lives… No More Human Abuse, No More Lies, No more Insane control…,Now we stand and fight collectively for our human rights..
With Game on – we want to be ready! We know if we want to step our game up, we need to be and stay healthy. Now, I am not one who turns to meds when or if I have the flu, or anything that might seem not normal with my body. I’m a precautionary person when it comes to my health. I’m just saying I’ve been a healthy hemp girl for many moons now and in today’s world, health is wealth! So, I now turn to grandma’s life restoring remedies that seem to work every time, Organic Chicken for the Soul, with Herbal Sufi’s!.
ORGANIC Chicken stuffed with Herbs & Cannabis – YUMMMM for the SOUL!
The Recipe
HerbalSufi Cannabis & Organic Chicken recipe is sure to melt your taste buds and soothe your soul. Anyone can do this with a crock pot, organic chicken, a few veggies, herbs and some fresh cannabis leaves… And if you like, a side of brown rice makes this meal twice as delicious…First the savory taste of succulent baked chicken and herbs mixed with a few of your favorite veggies, served with rice and a green leafy salad with cannabis leaves as well, refreshingly delish. Day two, this becomes Herbal Chicken & Rice soup – best soup ever! The Cannabis leaves give this blend a rich savory flavor of the wild with the nutrients of the plant which is good for us and our wellbeing.
Cannabis is essential to our endocrine system, which balances our immune system – We each have cannabinoid receptors throughout our body’s organs and immune system. When fed cannabinoids our body begins to restore itself back to homeostasis of balance, naturally!
Not sure if you’ve been keeping current on how essential cannabinoids are for our endocrine systems which regulates our immune system, but our Government actually deemed it Essential in many states over this CV time. (it seems there are still a few brain cells still firing in that Gov. system)…anyway. Cannabis is Essential by Chris Kilham, a Notable in the Plant Wellness industry, explains why!
Personally we have deemed Cannabis / Hemp essential in our homes. Knowing ‘whole plant cannabis’ is full spectrum, containing whole plant nutrients, including CBD, THC, CBN and all the other terpenes, consuming the entire cannabis plant is where restoration begins.
Herbal Sufi Organic Chicken for the Soul
You’ll need a Crockpot and a few other things you probably have in your fridge or garden! If not there’s always Trader Joe’s or a Farmers Market near by.
1 Whole Fresh Organic Chicken
Veggie Options
Mushrooms
Garlic – minced or whole (pealed)
Onion
And whatever else you may desire, everything cooks easy in the crockpot!
Herbs
Cannabis leaves – between 10 and 15 leaves or a few tops
Use the fresh leaves or Herbal tops intuitively!
Basil – 10 leaves
Rosmery – handful
Thyme – to taste – I use a few fresh
Ginger – a small piece – but not to small – use your intuition about a ½ piece
Lemon – squeeze 1 whole lemon onto the chicken before you cover it
Creation Instructions:
15 to 20 minutes to prepare
4 to 5 hours in the Crock’er on high
I recommend you do this in the AM – at least by 11is – it’ll be good to go by 5 – it could be a little sooner and the purpose of the crock is, how slow can we go! haha
In the Beginning
Wash your organic chicken well in cold water
You’ll want organic because you’re worth the non-chemical feeding of our body, soul, experience.
Dripdry the checkin out over the sink while rubbing some good hymilain salt over its full body, including inside.
Chop and mix all herbs – add 1 teaspoon of sesame seed oil to this, blend and put into the cavity of the chicken – it’s not going to fill it – it’s going to add a world of flavoring.
Cut veggies to bite size
Stuff Chicken with herbs
Put in CropPot
Fill bottom along the sides of the chicken with ⅛ cup of water, just covering the bottom – The chicken and veggies will create all their own juices
Add Veggies around the sides of the chicken in the crockpot –
Add your one special MMJ or HEMP LEAF to the middle, take a picture and share it with the world, or at least us. HempingtonPost proudly supports all things Cannabis.
*We found out how many plants we can grow per household and planted our four. Already we are juicing and cooking with the leaves every day, highly recommended. With this in mind – may your days be filled with good will as the world turns trying to figure out how we can move forward collectively…? I say, FREE the Plant and Educate the Humans to take care of their Soul and Soul connections first. Together We Grow!
Contact me directly for personally with your questions and more cannabis recipes…
Next Juicing with Cannabis – it’s amazingly delicious and off the charts healthy –
Hemp and Honey Bees are two of the most popular social topics in the world right now – and why shouldn’t they bee? They’re two of the most powerful contributors to better overall human health and happiness.
CBD from Hemp provides seemingly endless potential to human health with its neuroprotective and anti-oxidant qualities. Honey bees provide some of the most potent immune-boosting byproducts, including raw honey, bees wax, and propolis, each contributing anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory benefits. Combining CBD and Honey just makes sense!
On top of all benefits to our physiological health, Cannabis and honey bees also contribute to a more sustainable world. As we currently face alarming rates of toxic emissions from fossil fuels and chemical and nuclear plants, the world needs some help keeping itself clean.
Honey bees and Cannabis provide two of the answers.
Hemp helps rid the world of harmful toxins, soaking up heavy metals from soils and encouraging ecological proliferation. According to smithsonianmag.com, “Over the years, bees, honey and wax have been tested for fluoride, lead, zinc, nickel and potassium; more complicated molecules like naphthalene (a toxic compound derived from coal tar, and also the main ingredient in mothballs); even radioactive compounds like cesium, tritium and plutonium.” Honey bees help rid the world of toxins and are responsible for 1/3 of the food we find so irresistible. Certainly, together, they make any location they co-inhabit a better place to live. They also provide all the essential nutrients humans beings need to survive.
We need them both.
But do they need each other?
In order to understand what potential synergy might exist between them, we need to better understand their truest natures, independent of each other.
Bees need to feed
As Cannabis plants feed off of a specific combination of sunlight, water and soil nutrients, bees seek out their own specific formula from nature. Inside the hive, larvae and queens feed off of pollen, densely packed with important amino acids, while worker bees feed off of nectar, rich in carbohydrates.
Bees will fly up to 5 miles in search of pollen and look for flowers producing the largest repeatable quantities of nectar. Nectar comes from male and female plants which require the assistance of insect pollinators. The male plant first offers a minibar of delicious nectar to the bees, free of charge, teasing them with a small sampling of the goods. Once the feast has begun, female plants offer up to 3 times the amount of nectar as the males, luring the bees with the male pollen to their flowers, completing a successful reproductive cycle.
Cannabis plants reproduce by way of wind pollination and have no need to produce nectar, making them less attractive to the honey bees when other flowering plants are more available. That’s not to say that male Cannabis plants and their pollen don’t help the honey bees. Whitney Cranshaw, a professor of entomology at CSU’s Department of Bioagricultural Science and Pest Management, said “While hemp pollen is collected by bees, it is unlikely that there is any benefits to hemp from bee pollination. The benefits is that it is a good source, present in late summer, that can be an important resource for bees when alternative pollen resources are not available.”
In order to have a sustainable amount of pollen to feed the bees, the field would need to be dominated by males. If as a farmer, your goal is to capitalize on byproducts of male plants including seeds and fibers, your Cannabis plants can be a highly beneficial food source for the bees. More studies will have to be conducted to see if any data appears suggesting the bees help in the propagation of the hemp.
Arranging a Marriage
If Cannabis doesn’t have the natural honey bee draw of other plants, is it possible to get cannabinoids naturally into the honey. The short answer, not naturally.
There are several ways to “trick” the honey bee into landing on a female Hemp plants, which are rich in cannabinoids. Once the bees have landed on the female flowers, they’ll stick to the cannabinoid-rich trichomes.
How do you trick a bee?
Spray your female buds with a sugar water as similar to the fructose/glucose profile of nectar, which will entice the bees to land.
Use bees to pollinate indoor grows (e.g. Greenhouse grows), which traps the bees inside and forces them to land on female Cannabis plants.
These two methods result in bees picking up the cannabinoid-rich resins on their hairy bodies. There are preliminary studies showing that these resins that have stuck to their bodies have made it into the propolis, an anti-microbial wax sealant that bees create for use in their walls.
In conclusion, there is no evidence that honey bees will naturally produce CBD Honey by putting hives in near proximity to hemp varietals. The Hemp produces beneficial pollen which can be a supplemental food source to the bees during food scarcity and the bees can use the Cannabis resins to produce propolis. Here are some more questions with answers still to be determined:
Could honey bees minimize the pollen drift between hemp and marijuana fields for marijuana growers trying to prevent genetic cross-contamination?
Bees are known to increase fruit and seed production for other species of plants like strawberries and squash. Will there be an increase to hemp seed set and yield through biological pollination?
I am one of those crazy people that loves to receive items in the mail. I love UPS and FedEx. When I see that brown or white truck, I get so excited. It means they might be delivering something awesome to my home.
The other day I was thrilled to find a package in my mailbox. I was pleasantly surprised to open the package and find a box of CannaBees Hemp Honey Rescue Blend. The package was a bright yellow and white and so inviting. It was like Spring Flowers!!! I saw the word “Relieve” and couldn’t wait to try it out.
I am a cancer survivor who also suffers from Fibromyalgia. I often suffer from the pain in my hands. This day was no different. Of course, I have found healing from exploring a variety of Hemp Products that have really assisted me in managing this pesky disease. I was anxious to try this honey and explore how this product would work. Each package of honey is packaged in a “to go” package. Great for traveling or even taking to work when you’re on the run. The package is user friendly for sure. You simply fold the package and it opens up. The honey is at your disposal. Squeeze and go right out of the package. My first reaction was how sweet and delicious the honey was. It was hard to believe it was a Hemp Product. Within 30 minutes the pain in my hands was gone. I was thrilled.
I have been using my honey for the past week now. I’ve not only noticed a difference in the inflammation in my body but more importantly the pain in my hands. I am feeling great. I have also noticed that when I take the honey in the early evening I become so relaxed. The stress of the day is gone.
If you haven’t tried Canna Bees Honey, I would highly recommend giving this honey a try. It’s not only delicious, it works!!! Tonight I think I’ll squeeze some honey in my tea and see how that works. I’ll certainly keep you posted. In the meantime check out Canna Bees Rescue Blend. You will be “relieved” when you do.
How much more delightful and powerful could organic CBD and organic Honey be if they were mixed together’, thought the founders of BeeDeightful CANNABEES, ‘they could create even more beneficial and impacting results for thoses who taste their nectars’. This makes total sense so we reached out to BeeDelightful to try some of their delicious CBD Honey for our Hemp Product Review. Here’s a quick fyi, HempingtonPost will not even do a product review if we feel the product is not something perfect and worthy for our followers, who trust us to bring trusted brand hemp information.
Aromatic oils that give cannabis its signature taste and smell might have a role to play in fighting the coronavirus.
Israeli researchers at the forefront of cannabis research are now investigating the potential of a formulation of cannabis terpenes in treating viral infections, COVID-19 included.
Is cannabis effective against COVID-19? Researchers want to know
Secreted in the same glands that produce cannabinoids like THC and CBD, terpenes are aromatic oils that are responsible for the taste and smell of cannabis — but that’s not all that they do.
Research suggests that terpenes play a considerable role in not only tempering the intoxicating effects of THC, but also creating synergy with phytocannabinoids and even increasing their therapeutic value.
In the context of the coronavirus crisis, researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology are testing the therapeutic potential of cannabis terpenes.
During previous severe coronavirus outbreaks, such as those caused by the SARS coronavirus in 2002-2003, researchers found that cannabis terpenes reduced disease severity and impact in both in-vitro and in-vivo. In a 2007 study published in the Journal of Medical Chemistry, Chinese scientists concluded that the terpenes blocked a certain protein that allows the virus to replicate its genetic material.
“Our lab has been approved to operate as a corona lab, and in doing so, we are promoting two studies based on existing cannabis studies,” Professor Dedi Meiri of the Israel Institute of Technology said in a statement forHealth Europa.
“First, we will try to identify the plant’s own molecules that are capable of suppressing the immune response to the COVID-19 coronavirus – which causes inflammation and severe disease – to lower the immune system response without suppressing it, thereby providing better complementary treatment to the steroids, which completely suppress the immune system.”
Meiri and colleagues hope that the terpenes might modulate the effect of cytokine storms –– the overreaction of the body’s immune system that can cause complications and multiple organ failure.
The novel formulation is designed to be administered by direct inhalation.
Cytokines are small proteins released by many different cells in the body, including those of the immune system where they coordinate the body’s response against infection and trigger inflammation.
It’s believed that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can trigger cytokine storm syndrome, attacking healthy lungs, eventually causing their collapse.
Besides looking into terpenes’ potential to lower the immune system response, the Israeli researchers are also investigating how these cannabis molecules interact with the ACE2 receptor. It is thanks to this receptor, which is abundantly found in cells in the respiratory tract, that the coronavirus enters cells and begins replicating its genetic material.
“There is a process that examines the effect of cannabis molecules on proteins as well, and we are now examining which ones are relevant to the same receptor, with the goal of reducing its expression, making it difficult for the virus to enter the cell and proliferate,” Meiri said.
Previously, researchers at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, found that certain Cannabis sativa extracts could be used in treatments to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
A word of caution
The results of these preliminary studies shouldn’t by any means be considered an endorsement of cannabis in these trying times. COVID-19 is a severe respiratory illness that is known to aggressively attack the lungs. As such, those who smoke tobacco or marijuana might be at particular risk.
Research on cannabis as a COVID-19 treatment is still ongoing and it will likely take a long time before we have clear answers. In the meantime, don’t self-medicate and risk making matters worse.
