January 17, 2025 • 53 mins
What if you could revolutionize the construction industry while healing the planet? Join us as we chat with Steve Barron, a former director turned eco-conscious builder, who is doing just that. Driven by a deep commitment to sustainability, Steve shares his remarkable journey from the creative world of directing to the promising fields of hemp farming in Cambridgeshire. Discover how his innovative approach is paving the way for hemp to become a cornerstone of sustainable building practices, offering fast-growing, carbon-sequestering materials with incredible potential.
Explore the exciting world of hemp-based construction materials as we compare traditional building methods to innovative alternatives. Steve guides us through his personal project—a modern house constructed with prefabricated hemp panels—showcasing their acoustic benefits, strength, and seamless integration into contemporary design. As we navigate the challenges and successes of sourcing and processing hemp locally, you'll also uncover the historical uses of hemp fibers and their transformative potential for the construction landscape.
We delve into the rebranding of hemp and its adoption in the construction industry, addressing the need to shift perceptions away from its association with cannabis. Steve discusses the regulatory hurdles and manufacturing challenges faced by the hemp industry while highlighting the growing consumer awareness of sustainability. Imagine a world where buildings proudly display their green credentials—this episode offers a vision of that future and the steps we can take to achieve it.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello Steve, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Yeah, I'm good Thanks .
Speaker 1 (00:04):
So all the way from England the other side of the
pond.
Well, for us I've got to go theentire country and then I've
got to go over the pond becauseI'm on the west coast of Canada.
So what's it like over in theUK there?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It's pretty cold, cold and wet, but it is most
Decembers, thankfully it's coldand wet because we don't want it
to change too much, but it'syeah, it's a nice place to hang
out.
I do love Vancouver, though.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
You've been here before.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah, I spent a year there doing a TV series,
actually.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
A TV series.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Wow, were you a producer or something.
I'm a director actually oh,cool, okay, and is that a hobby
you're doing now?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
What the TV or the.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
The directing yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
No, it's my main job.
It's what I do.
I've actually got into thisconstruction world really as
trying to find a way to put backand to help out the environment
, as everyone's hopefully.
Who's got any sense is going totry and do, but I still my main
(01:17):
income is.
Most of my days are working intelevision.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Well, that's pretty cool.
It's nice to have some morecreative people in the
construction industry addingtheir other world views into
construction, so that's prettycool.
So whereabouts in London areyou?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I'm London Fields, which is Hackney in London, in
East London.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Hackney.
That sounds like somethinghaphazardly Sounds hackney,
hackney.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
That sounds like something haphazardly.
Yeah, it's quite a cool areafull of kind of creative people,
but my main sort of residenceis the farmhouse the hemp
farmhouse that we built inCambridgeshire.
It's about an hour and a halffrom here.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
So an hour and a half from where you are now, Is that
north, east, south?
Where?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Pretty much north.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
North okay.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Pretty direct north.
Yeah, Okay, cool In theCambridge world.
Ah, nice Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Well, that's cool.
So two Brits talking about hempin construction, that's going
to be interesting.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, just to qualify that I did grow up in England,
but I was actually born inDublin in Ireland.
Oh, okay, that's just topinpoint it exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Gotcha Okay, well, let's get into it.
Welcome to the Site.
Visit Podcast Leadership andperspective from construction
with your host, James Falkner.
From construction, your host.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
James Falkner.
Business as usual, as it hasbeen for so long now that it
goes back to what we weretalking about before and hitting
the reset button you know youread all the books.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
You read the email, you read Scaling Up, you read
Good to Great.
You know I could go on.
We've got to a place where wefound the secret serum.
We found the secret potion.
We can get the workers in.
We know where to get them.
Once I was on the job site fora while and actually we had a
semester phone group and Iordered a pre-finished patio out
front of the sidechillers.
I was down at Dallas and a guyjust hit me up on LinkedIn out
(03:19):
of the blue and said he wasdriving from Oklahoma to Dallas
to meet with me because he heardthe Faber Connect platform on
your guys' podcast.
Own it, crush it and love it,and we celebrate these values
every single day.
Let's chat.
Let's chat a little bit about,um, your farm, because you have
(04:16):
what was the?
What was this interest inbecoming involved in hemp?
To begin with?
Like, what is the?
What is the?
What is the?
Is it the fact that it's a, atype of material that's prolific
in terms of, you know, beingable to grow quickly?
It's, doesn't take a lot ofenergy to grow it's and it's
(04:36):
very tough?
Like what?
What's what made you say I'mgoing to start to grow this in
the margin farm?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
well, that's the canadian connection, really.
Um, I was, uh, I wanted to try.
A granddaughter came along inmy life and I thought you know
what I've been going to tell herwhen she's 12 years old and um
and uh, you know about thefuture and what we did as our
generation.
I felt hadn't really doneenough and I went looking for
(05:03):
some sort of ecological impact Icould make, either through
farming or through some othercarbon sequestration.
And my friend Fonda, whoactually is from Canada, she
said that over in Canada there'squite a lot of work going on
(05:24):
with hemp and hemp was she wastalking specifically about CBD
and this is about seven, eightyears ago and she said that it
apparently is this wonder plant.
So I went researching we bothdid, actually, we both went
researching online and found ahemp farm in uh in the uk, in
(05:45):
oxfordshire, and met a lot ofreally nice people who were
running it as a kind ofcooperative, uh, a non-profit
cooperative, and they, they weretelling us quite a lot of uh
what this plant has been andwhere it's been for the last
hundred years and how it's beenthrough such a been so
(06:07):
ostracized and not jumped uponas something that could be of
value and, as I looked into it,the technical side of it was
that it grows so fast and sodense and so tall and so strong
that it sequesters carbon at areally fast rate, faster than
(06:30):
most plants.
I mean bamboo's right up there,obviously, but we don't grow
bamboo in the UK.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Okay, so take us through that.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
So as it's growing, it's absorbing the carbon it's
absorbing the carbon as it'sgrowing and because if you take
a field of absorbed carbon you'dfind the biggest field you've
got just about is a hemp field,because it's taller, bigger,
closer, bigger biomass comes offof that acreage.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
So is the.
I'm going to be totally naivehere in these questions, so bear
with me going to be totallynaive here in these questions,
so bear with me.
So when we talk about the, thedifference between a hemp plant
and a pot plant, are we talkingthe same things?
That you're getting the sameyield of um cannabis as you are
(07:18):
hemp like when these fields arethey, are they essentially um
drug factories is?
Is that the byproduct ofgrowing hemp?
It's not so.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
It's totally two different things well, no, it's
very much the same thing.
It's all called cannabis, okay,everything.
Hemp is just a word, that kindof is it like a nickname for the
industrial use of cannabis?
I see, okay, and cannabis isn'tall hallucinogenic.
There are hundreds of strainsof cannabis that have no impact
(07:51):
for THC, which is thehallucinogenic.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Right, that's the hallucinogenic.
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
So what we're talking about when I talk about the big
fields of growing large amountsof it, it's the plants that
don't have that hallucinogenic.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
They look exactly like the other cannabis plants,
except they're bigger andstronger ah, okay, cool, okay,
so, but they do have some kindof like butt on them and that's
perhaps only a cbd kind of athing.
Do they all have cbd?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
yeah, you can extract cbd from them.
Okay, yeah, 95% of them haveCBD, but a much smaller
percentage have THC.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Gotcha, okay, so let's just call this the crop
for building materials, yeah,and other products, for instance
.
So where you are, how big arethese fields of this stuff?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Not big at all.
We've got the worst sort ofrules in growing in this country
than there are in othercountries like Canada.
Canada, really, to get alicense to grow hemp or cannabis
in Canada, as long as it's notTHC content, it's pretty
(09:11):
straightforward in Canada.
In the UK we have to get alicense for three years from the
Drugs and Arms Department ofthe Home Office, which is people
that don't really understandfarming or construction, but
they understand drugs andbecause it's called cannabis,
yeah it just gets lumped in withthat.
(09:31):
It gets lumped in with it.
So it's very hard to get thepermissions.
And once you have thepermissions, for instance,
you're not allowed at the momentto extract the CBD from it
because they don't understandCBD.
So we can import CBD like crazylike we do but we can't
actually as farmers, we can'tactually process for CBD and we
(09:54):
can't grow our plants to gainCBD.
We can only grow them to getthe fiber from the stalk and get
the seeds from the head, andthe seeds must be used for food,
like you're crushing it for oil, which is a very good oil, and
we've done that.
But we have to then throw awayour leaves and flowers where the
(10:15):
CBD is at its biggest amount.
We have to throw that or burnit or bury it.
We cannot process for it, whichis a crazy, ludicrous
legislation that has to changeone day.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Do you think it's perhaps part of the fact that if
they were to open that up, thenthey would have to check and
regulate different strains andthat would be even more homework
for them to do?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Well, they've already done that.
They've only allowed out ofknown strains about 160, 180
strains that are known aroundthe world.
We're only allowed 13.
They've checked 13 of them.
Oh, I see, Okay, and thenyou're right.
They stopped spending the timedoing that and said, okay,
you've got to choose one ofthese 13, and you can grow that
(11:05):
with this license.
And that is a problem, becausethe climate that they grow in is
different in every country andyou can get ones that are more
suitable to the climate in themiddle of the UK, to the climate
in the north of the UK.
If we had more again,legislation gave us more choice.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Okay, so you have a product on your website that
emulates basically corrugatedroofing or siding, a product.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, it's siding.
That's what we've used it for.
It's a rain screen.
On the side of our buildings webuilt a farmhouse out of hemp.
On the inside it's likehempcrete, which I'm sure you've
come across before.
It's a building block.
It's not concrete.
It's a form of crystallizedinner fiber of the hemp and that
(12:05):
has been used for many years asa building block in places that
want to use it.
It's about the fifth of theweight of concrete, of
traditional concrete blocks, butit's not completely
load-bearing and it needs somesort of structure to help it get
(12:26):
fully load-bearing.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Okay, that's the interesting part.
So, for instance, if we were totake a concrete cinder block,
for instance, that has thehollow core, so that cinder
block versus the hemp version ofit, so the cinder block would
be load-bearing, the other onewould not, is that?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
correct.
Yes, exactly, it would be partload-bearing and it would need
the other half of the load to beborne by either wood which can
be.
You know, I'm just talking aplank of wood per meter.
I see it's not half and a halfor anything like that in terms
of what you're seeing, what,what you're using okay.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So in terms of the um , some things you know, people
might not know at least I don'tknow, so I'm going to assume
other people might be a littlebit, you know, opaque on this as
well is uh, so it's the the thestock fibers from the plant
that are processed, and thenthey are the fibers that are in,
uh, you know, blocks, forinstance.
(13:30):
Um, are they, you know, quarterinch fibers like?
What sort of size did that didthey get, and how do they get
stripped out of the?
So what's the processing, is it?
They get crushed first and theyget into a blender kind of
situation, like an auger kind ofthing.
How does that work?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, there's processing where you separate
the fibers, the outer fibers,which are called the bast fibers
, okay, for a thousand yearsused, uh, more than a thousand
years used by the romans, uh, tofor shipping, because there's a
(14:08):
strong, super strong fiber, um,that's the bass fiber on the
outside.
So you strip away that outsidebass fiber and inside you have
this, uh, woody core, okay,which, uh, you can do a number
of different sizes, uh, youcould have a quarter of an inch
sizes and cut them all up andput them all together and then
(14:29):
add lime to that mix and a bitof water and you're mixing up
what is a version, a hempcrete,really A hempcrete.
Okay, or you could leave themlike we did in the house.
We left them about an inch ortwo long and had them so that
they were exposed in the house.
You can see on our website andon our Instagram at marjan
(14:54):
underscore farm, you can see thewebsite where I mean sorry, the
Insta where it's exposed as aninner building block because we
wanted to tell the story of howthe hemp was within the whole
house.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
So I'm just looking at that now.
So where do I see that exposedon your website, on the Margin
Farm website?
Is there a picture of it?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
You should find it on the website and better to go to
Instagram.
That's where all the photos arereally Okay At margin
underscore farm.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
At margin.
This is interesting to checkthis out.
Let me have a look here.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, you'll see, there's a bunch of articles from
magazines and newspapers andstuff and you should see the
pictures.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Okay, margin Farm, here we go.
Okay, all right, okay, oh yeah,wow, okay, yeah.
Geez, that's crazy.
Have you got the inside?
I do, yeah, I do.
So I'm actually looking at, uh,yeah, so in between, what would
(16:09):
be considered um insulation, itlooks like you have.
You have some two by fours thatare, two by sixes that are
looking like 16 inch centers,typically for typical framing,
and then yeah, and then you andthen you have hemp in there.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, they are actually cassettes 52 cassettes
that we poured the hemp.
We're laying down that wepoured the hemp in and it's set,
and then we brought them tolike a prefab oh, I see, so that
I got you right.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
So what's the dimensions of those, of those
panels then, of those?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
they're generally, they're all.
They're slightly differentaround the house, but eight,
eight foot by four foot, sort ofoh crazy.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Okay, but they're thick, though.
What's the thickness of thosethings?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
thickness varies in depending on which wall you're
doing.
Our architect has done itspecifically for what works for
the building.
We've got a brick building nextdoor to one of them, so it has
a slightly smaller thickness,but we're talking 8 to 10 inches
of that.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So that's going to be really good for acoustics.
Obviously, the silencing ofthat, so that's going to be
really good for acoustics.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
obviously the silencing of sound.
Yeah, you're in there and it'slike you're in a recording
studio Perfect that's cool, yeah, nice.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
And then I see that you have like sort of a ceiling
soft kind of material.
There Is that hemp as well.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
That isn't hemp.
It could have been, but it wasour architect's favorite panels
that were available at the time.
It's kind of a spaghetti wood,a waste wood mix panel, and
that's what she wanted to put onthe ceiling.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
So this is cool.
So I mean, you've basicallymade a model of materials for a,
you know, and the house doesn'tlook super old looking.
It actually looks pretty cool,pretty contemporary looking, and
the house doesn't look superold-looking unless it looks
pretty cool, prettycontemporary-looking.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, I mean it was, grow your own home was what we
were doing.
That's pretty cool.
You know, the field was 30meters away and we didn't know
whether the hemp would grow, butwe needed it to grow and grow
well, and it did.
And so that first year we foundprocessing a few hours away,
(18:25):
which was good, an hour away, Ishould say in Leicestershire,
which was good and we sent themround bales.
They sent their round balesinto a machine, a decorticator,
which actually separated out thetwo fibers.
There's a little film whichhelps you, show you understand
(18:48):
the process.
It's on Margin Farm and Dazeen,which is an architectural.
I don't know if you've been onDazeen D-E-Z.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
I have been on that, but I haven't seen your thing
specifically.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, Dazeen, If you put Dazeen Margin Farm you have
a little one-minute,one-and-a-half-minute film that
just shows the process fromgrowing to fixing the final rain
screen on the house.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
So it's interesting.
I'm looking at a.
You know, there's anotherwebsite, which is a Canadian one
, called Hemp Block Canada, andon there I'm seeing load-bearing
hemp blocks, hempcrete blocks,okay, which is crazy.
So yeah, they've got somefull-on.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, I mean, canada was well, you know, seemed to be
well ahead of it when westarted getting involved in
terms of having more growing,far more.
I think there was like 100,000acres growing, whereas we in
England would be lucky to find10,000 acres of hemp growing.
Because of that legislationproblem.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
So what's the?
Do you think there's just astigma around hemp in general
because it's attached to illicitdrugs that are considered
illicit in lots of places,obviously socially acceptable
these days.
But you know the cannabis is.
You know as many places in theworld.
You got cannabis on you in anairport and it's big trouble.
So you know it's stillconsidered in many places, you
(20:18):
know, problematic.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, I think the stigma is still there,
definitely, but it's not.
It's it's easing away.
It's easing away.
Now.
We need to find ways of doingthings and people are.
People are, uh, are more andmore getting on board the idea.
I think when I started seven,seven, eight years ago on this
project, uh, when I mentioned it, even to my friends, it was all
(20:40):
an eye roll of like, oh youknow, with the hemp and things,
and now that's gone away.
You say that and they saidthey've heard about it.
Right, they've read about it,or they they're more open to
understanding what, uh, what itcan do so do you think that
there's an element of um?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
let me just think here.
So when you think of there's anumber of initiatives that come
into a building project, thereis.
There's this like concrete andtraditional building materials
obviously are ubiquitous, likeeveryone uses those just because
it's like the sure thing, it'sthe.
We're just going to get thisdone If budgets are tight and
(21:21):
timelines are tight.
We're just going to get thisdone.
If budgets are tight andtimelines are tight, we're just
going to go with the oldstandard and it's tried, trusted
and true, regardless of whatit's doing to the planet.
Sometimes people just are noteven thinking about that,
especially smaller projects.
You know you see a lot ofinstitutional jobs that are
being done.
That you know, especially, youknow, government-tendered kind
(21:45):
of projects.
This is a situation where theyhave made climate commitments,
they've made environmentalcommitments and you know they
have to have their buildingspass a certain criteria in order
to move forward in general andthey've made a commitment over
time.
Those ones.
You see these alternativebuilding products being used or
being considered also with greenroofs, all that kind of stuff.
(22:07):
So as we sort of move forwardwhen, in order for products like
this to really really hit home.
There needs to be this lowestcommon denominator.
Is going to be consideringusing it.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, and I think that is slowly happening as well
, but it needs more help fromthe government.
There needs to be.
It's like a tax on smoking youshould have a tax on the harmful
products that you can buy, butalso, at the same time, what's
being developed.
Even recently in France there'sa new concrete mix which is 70%
(22:46):
of it is natural, doesn't havethe harmful carcinogenic that
you associate with concrete.
Those things are happening Forthe first time.
They're really happening, sopretty soon that's got to get
out there and be the cost thesame as doing it the bad way,
and then you can make an easychoice because it's not about
(23:06):
cost then, and I think that thatis slowly happening.
I know there's um, there was anentrepreneur, uh, at adaptivate,
another company in england thatwere doing hemp, uh, plaster,
and they're now into being cued.
They're into all the big um,you know, home depot type uh, uh
, institutions and uh, it's,it's starting to happen.
(23:27):
Um, but uh, yeah, we, we can'tlet it be that, uh, it's cheaper
to uh to to use bad stuff.
That just that equation's gotto go away yeah, no, I uh.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
It's interesting, like when I like drywall is one
of the craziest ones to me.
I just look at the process thatit that is required for us
humans to be able to look at aperfect wall, and it's all about
that, it's.
It's.
It's us like if you go into alike a louis vuitton store or a
(24:02):
I don't know high-end, you knowhigh-end goods store, uh, where
clothes, for instance, are the,are the, the item for sale where
you're, there has to be aspecific focus on that.
You see a lot of minimalistdesign in terms of highlighting
those clothes and very oftenit's just white, white walls,
(24:23):
perfect joins, perfect white,white, white looking.
You know, all the way down tothe floor, all the way into the
wall, up to the ceiling, and wehave to have drywall to
accomplish this.
And you look at what has to bedone to make that happen.
You gotta have the steel studbehind there, you gotta have the
drywall, you gotta have the.
You got to have the steel studbehind there.
You got to have the driveway,you got to have the screws, you
(24:43):
got to have the mud, you got tohave the edging, you got to have
tape, all this stuff that hasto be done in order for us to
accept that as luxury.
And when we, in order forchange to happen, there needs to
be, the model has to change.
So if a Louis Vuitton store waslike the model for what luxury
(25:12):
was, and that was not theperfect white wall, that was
something else then you wouldsee other types of brands try to
emulate that, because they'reall trying to emulate value.
They're all trying to emulatehow do we provide a feeling or
notion to our customer that isgoing to make them feel better?
(25:33):
It's going to give them thatone bit of lift that defined
themselves, defined themselves.
So this is a human condition wehave of why we end up having to
use the things that haveconsistently been able to make
us feel better, and that isconstruction that looks clean,
like for things to be white,like white.
(25:57):
White white in the world.
Think about it.
White paint like white, whitewhite in the world.
Think about it.
White paint, white drywall, mud, white building materials.
The white pigment itself hascreated so much environmental
damage.
Just that color, just that fact.
You see white in nature, butit's not that same kind of
pigment.
You know, it's a natural,occurring white.
(26:20):
If you take a white petal froma flower and you you know you're
not getting white pigment fromthat.
It just will eventually just goand trend, go transparent when
you get it wet.
So I know I'm going totallyinto the weeds here and it will
make sense at some point whatI'm trying to get at here.
But in order for us to accepthemp, for instance, as a
(26:45):
building material and make thatubiquitous along all building
material choices, I think thatit's brand, the word hemp and
all of the associations we have.
Like if I sit to say to theaverage person, hey, what do you
think of a building block or abuilding material in hemp?
(27:07):
And as soon as I say that wordhemp, they double click on that
word in their attention and awhole bunch of associated items
come into their conscious.
Right there they start to think, okay, well, hemp they'll go,
marijuana they'll go.
You know burlap kind of bagsthey'll go.
Like a weird, you know sort of,you know craft kind of material
(27:35):
, that kind of stuff, sort ofbohemian, all that kind of stuff
.
That's the what many people,when they double-click on the
word hemp, that's what comes upin their minds, that's what
they've been given over time.
So it's almost as though hemphas already cannibalized itself
as a word.
It has way too much baggage.
(27:56):
There needs to be some otherterm for this.
It needs a rebrand like badly.
It needs to be some other termfor this.
It needs a rebrand like badly.
It needs to be called somethingelse entirely.
And if it was something thathad no connection whatsoever to
the plant no connection tocannabis, no connection to CBD,
thc, any of that I think itwould have a better shot at
(28:19):
becoming this building materialor a substrate that you could
have multiple applications for.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, I mean I think you're right to a degree.
I'm hoping people are gainingmore knowledge about it and once
they do, the stigma will dieaway.
I feel it depends where it getsto.
(28:46):
We don't have to call it hemp.
I mean we're Margin Farm, we'renot Margin Hemp Farm or
anything.
When we do our corrugatedpanels, they call Margin Farm
corrugated panels and they are abrand in a way, or we are a
brand in a way.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Well, you are definitely.
You are definitely a brand, Iguess, where I'm going with it
in order for these materials tosort of be imported and exported
all over world markets.
You're going to have regulationaround that just because of the
material itself, like if youwere to say, let's say, at the
(29:30):
United States-Mexican border wehave a shipment of hemp prefab
panels that are coming throughthe border.
They're going to be like let'scheck that out.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah, and we've sent samples all over the world.
You know, 50 to Canada, 50 tothe United States, mexico,
australia, everything.
And you know they're tilesamples of natural fibers.
Yeah, you don't have to stayhome Fair enough.
Yeah, but it're tile samples ofnatural fibers.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, you don't have to stay home Fair enough, yeah,
but it is kind of interestingthough.
I mean, I think that we are inthis world of everything's a
brand, everything's an image,everything has a meaning, and it
just kind of bites ourself inorder to have progress, to move
forward.
We're so worried about what wethink of ourselves that we're
kind of wrecking the planet atthe same time.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, hopefully your podcasthelps avert some of that.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Well, we'll see.
I mean, you know, oneconversation at a time is really
all I can promise.
So let's just talk about thesecorrugated panels.
So it kind of reminds me it'sfunny that you know we're both
English and you know, in ourhome in England we had two acres
of sort of gardens.
We weren't rich, by the way, wejust lucky we had this.
(30:51):
We lived in a old militaryhospital potting shed, which is
you know where all the you'd potyour plants and all that kind
of stuff, and it had a roof, butit was, I think it was made of.
It looked like fiberglass, Ithink fiberglass, but it was
transparent or translucent oropaque.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
No it was.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
It was translucent, but it looked.
It was the exact same formfactor as your corrugated.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yes.
You know the sort of wave shape.
Uh yeah, there's uh zondulum.
There's a few differentproducts that uh that do that.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
They're plastic basically yeah, it was old
school though, but it definitelyhad fibers in it.
I could see.
I could see it had sort of ayeah, I think it was uh
reinforced, I think it wasfiberglass.
To be honest, yeah, yeah,that's old school, like english.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah, they were very efficient, but now they're going
to take 500 years to decompose.
If they do yeah, and if they do, little pieces will go into
everybody's food.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Okay, here we go.
This is the interesting part,let's just take us through.
Like what is your vision of theworld, of you know, sustainable
materials and what have youlearned over this time putting
your farmhouse together and alsoselling this corrugated?
Speaker 2 (32:20):
products to other, you know, construction projects,
etc.
There's an enormous industrythat's very hard to make any
kind of movement in, to push itacross to any other way of
thinking.
So, on a scale, on anythinglike a scale, but I've learned
(32:43):
that people are open tolistening about it and uh, that
if, if, uh, we can getinvestment, uh, the right sort
of investment.
And we've, we've had investmentand there's more, there's more
coming, and we've hooked up witha company we're building hemp
houses now as we speak who whoare inspired by us, uh, to build
(33:05):
, um, you know what.
Their plans are pretty big andthey've raised millions to begin
that and that's what it needs.
And because we don't have theinfrastructure for it at the
moment, we don't have thefacilities to do it on any kind
of scale.
It's partly because the UK mostof manufacturing went out of the
(33:27):
uk and it went to europe and itwent to india and and china and
everywhere else.
It's partly because of thatanyway.
So, um, but people are startingto talk local, they're starting
to say where did that come from?
They're looking at products andsaying which wasn't happening
seven, eight years ago.
It wasn't happening beforedavid attenborough came along
(33:47):
and did his plastic show, whichwas amazing and had a massive
impact on on what we've.
You know what we were doing toour oceans and and and
anti-plastic thing.
And people are now buyingchristmas presents on quite a
big scale where they're thinkingmore about.
I mean, plastic is still beingbought like crazy, but there is
(34:09):
a lot more thinking, a ton moresecondhand shops have come along
for people to buy clothing.
That doesn't mean that you haveto get something made really
badly and cheaply and in a nastyway in another country.
You can get it instead of itbeing shipped in.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
What do they call that?
Like single-season fashion orsomething like that?
What's the term for it?
Fast fashion?
I think it's called.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Is that what it is?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, like the czars of the world.
Well, it's actually czars notas bad as some of the other ones
.
I mean, some are just awful.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I'm sure Vancouver is a great place for that, because
I even met people there thatwere doing re-sewing old
clothings and putting togetherold jeans and re-renovating them
for new use, but I think thatthinking wasn't on anything like
the scale it is now seven,eight years ago.
So I've learned that people canpositively look at it, but it's
(35:16):
going to be very hard and wedon't know the answers is what
I've learned as well.
We don't know how long ourcorrugated panels will last in
extreme cold and extreme heat.
They've been up for seven yearsand what's happened to them in
(35:37):
that time is they've justchanged color, the way wood
changes color when it's exposedto daylight.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
You can paint those.
I guess right, or does thatlose some benefit?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
but it's gone back to the hemp color.
It's gone, it's poured its wayback to the hemp straw color.
I see it began as before.
It had the resin that took itto a dark brown.
I see, because the resin whichwe didn't talk about, but the
resin that goes into the uh, thehemp, before you thermal
compress it into the shape.
(36:09):
The resin is a farm waste resinmade of oat hulls and bagasse
and corn cob and things that arewaste on the farm and are
thrown together.
So it ends up being a darkbrown mush that you turn into a
liquid and we use it to dip ourhemp fiber mats in, to then
(36:32):
thermal compress them into thecorrugated shape.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
So I think there's two points that you made there.
One, specifically, is aroundconstruction that it's so vast
and then it's sort of difficultto break through and create
change within.
And you know I would say thatyou know people are doing.
(36:59):
The majority of constructionprojects, keep in mind, are
they're reacting to what thecustomer wants, not what they
want.
So I don't think theconstruction industry
necessarily is to blame.
Like those hardworking peoplewho are putting projects
together, are putting theirblood, sweat and tears to make
something happen.
(37:19):
They're mostly just deliveringon someone else's vision of
something that wants to be doneand they're getting paid a fee
for it.
And you know, I think, thatthere is.
It comes to if significantchange needs to be made, it
(37:41):
needs to come from the companiesand the individuals who are
creating these projects.
That's where the push needs tocome from.
It needs to come from the top,because a construction company
is not going to risk not gettinga job because they're pushing a
particular product.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
This won't do it well , I think it also needs to come
from government.
What's happening fairlyrecently is in the World Court
in the Hague, they're bringingin ecocide, which is a crime
like genocide.
Oh, ecocide, okay, yeah,something that will be used to
(38:26):
charge companies and individualswho are doing bad for the
environment.
Now that's a massive stepwhether they can police it and
put it through and get this tohappen.
But if that way of thinkingcame from the companies as well,
and the governments, it'sparticular.
If governments say, no, that'sillegal, you can't do that,
(38:49):
that's ecocide.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, well, they can barely police, you know, war
crimes, yeah, yeah, I doubt thatit's going to happen.
But you know, maybe you know,maybe the I always find that you
know violations of things thatare difficult to or sorry are
difficult to or sorry or easierto collect.
The levies, for instance, orthe or the fines for typically
(39:14):
go through.
For instance, you'll noticethat, um, let's, let's say that
a particular bylaw in a, in a ina city, um, let's say you're
not allowed to cycle on thesidewalk, okay, or on what do
you call it in England, sidewalk?
No, it's a pavement, pavement.
Oh, on the pavement, chap.
Yes, so you're not allowed tocycle on the pavement?
(39:38):
Well, that would mean a bylawofficer would have to stop
people who are doing that, havesome sort of altercation and
then try and find a way becausethere's no licensing on the
bikes to then go and have tofind a way to collect the fine.
Okay, total hassle.
Whereas parking tickets arefantastic because there's a
(39:59):
license plate and there's a rulethat's posted and they get to
passively stick a ticket on,create a record and then attach
it to some other license and beable to collect the money.
It's zero friction whatsoever,they just get to slap this thing
and collect.
So I think and the reason I'mbringing that up is that if
(40:20):
there was this eco side, forinstance, it would be very easy
to just have policy and be ableto just slap on fines,
specifically, and then theywould have to collect.
So, rather than, if we thinkabout war crimes, war crimes are
kind of like having to stop theperson bicycling on the
(40:41):
pavement you have to havealtercation.
So perhaps, there, you know, Ithink there's something to be
said for that.
So perhaps there, you know, Ithink there's something to be
said for that.
These passive fines, uh, maybethey start, you know, uh, on a
tighter jurisdiction, you knowlike local towns, and then it
goes to certain counties, andthen it goes from then to
countries and you know thencontinents, etc.
So maybe it can sort of expandthat way but.
(41:03):
I think that that that makesperfect sense in terms of you
know what we're doing to theplanet.
You know I think I kind of.
I keep going back to drywall.
That one, to me, is the biggestoffender.
Like I look at it and I'm likeGod, like what have you ever
seen?
Like.
So you know, I renovated aproperty recently and we took a
wall down.
(41:23):
I'm thinking, shit, where's allthe stuff going?
And it's awful.
Like you got drywall with paint, three layers of paint on it,
there's glue, there's like allthis stuff, and it's not useful.
It's got screws in it.
So like these materials.
And then you go to a building,a particular garbage dump, and
(41:46):
they say, no drywall.
You're thinking, okay, well,where do I have to take that?
I have to take that to aspecial place because they have
to do something specific to it.
But you know, we're in thistime right now, where we're all
excited about the new shinything, like I'm all excited
about the new clean wall I'mgoing to get, and I'm not
thinking about where the oldcrappy one that I had to take
(42:07):
down went.
So do you think it's sort ofjust a change in mindset?
We have to sort of snapourselves together.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
No, I think it's an investment, and An investment in
what, though?
specifically?
Investment in getting you canmake a drywall out of natural
fibers so that when you dump ityou're not doing any harm to the
environment.
So, is there a hemp drywallproduct?
There is, we don't have it.
(42:36):
There is one that's comingthrough the company I was
mentioning, the plaster company,adaptivate adaptivate they
they've got one that's justreleasing, uh, this company that
we're working with, hemp span,who are doing the um houses in
the uk, they're look, they'redeveloping something, uh, and it
(42:58):
you know, it's not.
It's not there it needs to be.
It needs to have money thrownat it and and, uh, it can and it
can be got.
And what you said earlier aboutit being it can't be the
expensive option, no, exactly.
So, somebody, the investment'sgot to also be in the fact
you're not going to make anymoney out of it until it reaches
(43:20):
a level of spread and thereforebecomes viable.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah.
So I mean, I was just lookingat, you know, hemp drywall
panels and it's interesting thatthey, because I think you kind
of need everything to go alongwith it.
Obviously you need the.
You know the gypsum that's in adrywall board.
Yeah, you know that's thatpowder.
Yeah, you know that's thatpowder.
Yeah, so you know that therewould obviously be what the hemp
(43:52):
would replace, and then I guessyou could have a hemp paper
that would be the front, thepaper side.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Yeah, well, hemp paper from the pulp has been
done.
It's been there forever.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yeah, we've been printing hemp business cards for
, you know, 15 years now.
Yeah, we've been printing hempbusiness cards for 15 years now.
But then I mean the reason thatthe drywall and I'm getting
specifically into drywallbecause I just find it
interesting, you know, havingthe opportunity to talk to you
about this and sort of envision.
(44:25):
We know how things could be inespecially your farmhouse if you
would have had a panel that youcould have made perfectly, that
you could have painted over,you could use, you know, sort of
more environmentally, um,responsible paint perhaps.
But yeah, clay paint yeah, ifyou would have had, you know, a
drywall or a drywall replacementpanel, and it came with all the
(44:47):
different things.
Like you know, I watch when you,when they put the corner bead
on, they there's a specific glueversion of a drywall paste that
sticks that in.
You know the differentcompounds that they have, and
there's there's the finishingcut, there's like the, the main
compound and there's a finishingcompound.
But if you had all of thosecomplementary products, the
entire drywall system and it wasin hemp, and then let's just
(45:11):
say I think what would makesense from the governmental side
is is you would get a rebatefor using them.
So I don't think, like in termsof the manufacturing side, to
get to that economy.
The economy is a scale in orderto be able to provide that much
product and be able to providethat much product and be able to
compete against a tried andtrue drywall industry, you're
(45:33):
obviously going to get some.
There's going to be politicalpushback there.
You know there's going to becompanies that aren't going to
want those ones to come along.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, and there'll be companies that will adapt to it
and, uh, want to be at the headof it, at the head of a river,
any kind of a revolution.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
who's smarter, who are not, you know, trying to
fight it hopefully well,hopefully, yeah, um, but it just
would make sense if, if youlike, I I've always thought with
what what is very, very, verycool is for there to be, on
every building that's built, forthere to be a plaque that has
(46:15):
perhaps a QR code on it or ithas a building materials listed
on it.
That is the.
It's the story of the intentionof the humans that made that,
and I think that that's animportant thing, especially as
you get to larger buildings,institutional buildings.
(46:36):
The effort that went intomaking those less of an
environmental impact, I thinkneeds to be advertised, and
we're in a world now wherepeople virtue everything.
Everything anybody does thesedays is trying to add some
little bit of splash of color totheir identity.
It doesn't matter if it's acompany, it doesn't matter if
(46:56):
it's a person.
Companies are an extension ofpeople.
Typically, people want to workfor companies that have good
brands and do good things andmakes them feel better.
They can be at a barbecue andsay I work at company XYZ and
they go oh, wow, god, yeah,that's fantastic.
You know you must be XYZ kindof person if you get to work
there.
All of these types of you know,altruistic motivations that
(47:18):
people have can actuallypositively affect the planet if
we architect it the right way.
So if you have that plaquethat's on the front of the
building, there people get tovirtue that and the result is no
one wants to put well, we usethe worst materials and wreck
the planet the most on thatplaque.
There's just no way.
It would always have to be apositive.
(47:39):
So it pushes people to be proudof things.
So we're in the Instagram world.
If a company's all finishedbuilding a build and they're all
standing around the particulararea of the entrance or whatever
, and there's the plaque andthey're all like here you go,
this is what we did.
Wow, that's an Instagram moment.
(48:00):
You have to do it.
We need to be in the.
You have to do it.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
And once that starts, to kick in all of these, you
know, alternative buildingproducts.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
They're all going to kick ass yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Well, I think you're absolutely right and there
should be that and there shouldbe a way of saying the amount of
carbon coming into that projectand the amount of carbon going
out, and how neutral, or how Imean negative, is positive, but
if we can get that for them toall give us more, that we've
(48:39):
drawn more carbon out in makingthat building than you have.
You're ahead of it and you havesome sort of a QR code that
tells you exactly how thosecalculations have been made and
how they add up Now, how themathematics work in that.
That's what we, as you say, ifwe get used to that in the
(49:00):
future, I think we're, you know,in five, ten years' time, I
think we'll be there if peoplekeep, you know, wanting, wanting
it, and uh, um, and it keepsgrowing and people understand it
and you know there's a wholenew generation of school
children who are coming throughand they're learning this in
their classroom now, which I'min the uk anyway, it's great.
(49:24):
They're learning about theimportance of the soil, the
importance of what we do andwhat we release on the
atmosphere and the badness ofcertain things, and hopefully
they can be changed with thesenew generations.
(49:44):
I mean I'm really excited.
I've got grandchildren.
In fact there's another one, afourth one on the way and you
know, I think for their futurethey'll grow up in a different
way where they do care aboutthis.
I know it's very hard to changepeople's mindset now, but there
will be a mindset that startsin a better place.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah Well, the only thing I would hope for the UK is
that there is a.
The new replacements of thesociety there are going to give
a crap as much as the altruisticBrits who have spent all this
time becoming conscious.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
That's.
The only threat, I think, iswith this global world we have.
We've got people moving in andout of countries and bringing
their baggage from one to theother, and all the work that
we're doing, as you say,teaching school children to do
these things, these are luxuryinitiatives.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
These are the initiatives that you do when all
things are okay and you are notstruggling just to survive yeah
, although growing understandingabout growing in in a world
where you know there's famineeverywhere, you know
understanding how to at least Imean it's impossible to cure
(51:11):
what, the scale of what is goingon.
But if we, you know, if thatknowledge can go in everywhere,
go into all generations of allcultures, then it's going to
make a difference in everywhere.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Yeah, well, hopefully .
Well, good on you, man.
I think that's pretty cool thestuff that you're doing, and,
yeah, it'd be interesting tocheck back with you another time
and see if you've got some moreconstruction projects.
I think it's an important thingto be doing, maybe looking at
those blocks, looking at someother things you could be doing
there, and that drywall side ofthings.
(51:49):
I mean, that is, even if, evenif, yeah, even if you could make
this would be very cool if youcould make a um uh, corner bead
made of hemp or a j channel likea j edge, which is just that
little edge that goes on theedge drywall, but that was made
of hemp, like the entire hempsystem.
(52:10):
There's so much to be donethere and I think, I think you
know the first step of you doingthe corrugated panels is pretty
cool, but it just shows thatyou could do anything.
That is, you know, if it wasinside, the opportunity is
inside, I think, because wedon't know what it's going to do
outside.
You know, for the elements, etcetera.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
But all the acoustical stuff yeah there's so
much opportunity inside, yeah,yeah pretty cool.
All right, well, this has beencool, cool.
Yeah, thanks, Steve, and yeah,we'll see what happens over the
next few years.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Yeah, so your website .
Let's just go through thatagain.
So you have margint margin,farmcom, and then you're on
linkedin, obviously, and then oninstagram I don't think we're
on linkedin, are we?
Speaker 2 (52:56):
I'm not on it.
I know that you're not.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
You're not on.
I think we found you, I thinkthrough linkedin, at one point,
but anyway, maybe not um are you, I might have signed up for it
about 10 years ago, but I'venever used it.
Okay, and then so on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
Yeah, the Insta is the best way because that keeps
pretty current and it's gotgaining followers on that.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
So that is Margins.
So M-A-R-G-E-N-T underscorefarm is where that can be found.
All right, well, that's prettyawesome.
Okay, steve.
Well, it was a really pleasure.
It's a great pleasure to meetyou, and best of luck with
everything.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
And thank you very much for your time.
Okay, all the best, all right,speak soon.
Okay, thanks, see you, okay,thanks.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
Bye.
Well, that does it for anotherepisode of the Site Visit.
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(54:06):
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All right, let's get back tobuilding.
Hello Steve, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Yeah, I'm good Thanks .
Speaker 1 (00:04):
So all the way from England the other side of the
pond.
Well, for us I've got to go theentire country and then I've
got to go over the pond becauseI'm on the west coast of Canada.
So what's it like over in theUK there?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It's pretty cold, cold and wet, but it is most
Decembers, thankfully it's coldand wet because we don't want it
to change too much, but it'syeah, it's a nice place to hang
out.
I do love Vancouver, though.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
You've been here before.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah, I spent a year there doing a TV series,
actually.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
A TV series.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Wow, were you a producer or something.
I'm a director actually oh,cool, okay, and is that a hobby
you're doing now?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
What the TV or the.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
The directing yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
No, it's my main job.
It's what I do.
I've actually got into thisconstruction world really as
trying to find a way to put backand to help out the environment
, as everyone's hopefully.
Who's got any sense is going totry and do, but I still my main
(01:17):
income is.
Most of my days are working intelevision.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Well, that's pretty cool.
It's nice to have some morecreative people in the
construction industry addingtheir other world views into
construction, so that's prettycool.
So whereabouts in London areyou?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I'm London Fields, which is Hackney in London, in
East London.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Hackney.
That sounds like somethinghaphazardly Sounds hackney,
hackney.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
That sounds like something haphazardly.
Yeah, it's quite a cool areafull of kind of creative people,
but my main sort of residenceis the farmhouse the hemp
farmhouse that we built inCambridgeshire.
It's about an hour and a halffrom here.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
So an hour and a half from where you are now, Is that
north, east, south?
Where?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Pretty much north.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
North okay.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Pretty direct north.
Yeah, Okay, cool In theCambridge world.
Ah, nice Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Well, that's cool.
So two Brits talking about hempin construction, that's going
to be interesting.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, just to qualify that I did grow up in England,
but I was actually born inDublin in Ireland.
Oh, okay, that's just topinpoint it exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Gotcha Okay, well, let's get into it.
Welcome to the Site.
Visit Podcast Leadership andperspective from construction
with your host, James Falkner.
From construction, your host.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
James Falkner.
Business as usual, as it hasbeen for so long now that it
goes back to what we weretalking about before and hitting
the reset button you know youread all the books.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
You read the email, you read Scaling Up, you read
Good to Great.
You know I could go on.
We've got to a place where wefound the secret serum.
We found the secret potion.
We can get the workers in.
We know where to get them.
Once I was on the job site fora while and actually we had a
semester phone group and Iordered a pre-finished patio out
front of the sidechillers.
I was down at Dallas and a guyjust hit me up on LinkedIn out
(03:19):
of the blue and said he wasdriving from Oklahoma to Dallas
to meet with me because he heardthe Faber Connect platform on
your guys' podcast.
Own it, crush it and love it,and we celebrate these values
every single day.
Let's chat.
Let's chat a little bit about,um, your farm, because you have
(04:16):
what was the?
What was this interest inbecoming involved in hemp?
To begin with?
Like, what is the?
What is the?
What is the?
Is it the fact that it's a, atype of material that's prolific
in terms of, you know, beingable to grow quickly?
It's, doesn't take a lot ofenergy to grow it's and it's
(04:36):
very tough?
Like what?
What's what made you say I'mgoing to start to grow this in
the margin farm?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
well, that's the canadian connection, really.
Um, I was, uh, I wanted to try.
A granddaughter came along inmy life and I thought you know
what I've been going to tell herwhen she's 12 years old and um
and uh, you know about thefuture and what we did as our
generation.
I felt hadn't really doneenough and I went looking for
(05:03):
some sort of ecological impact Icould make, either through
farming or through some othercarbon sequestration.
And my friend Fonda, whoactually is from Canada, she
said that over in Canada there'squite a lot of work going on
(05:24):
with hemp and hemp was she wastalking specifically about CBD
and this is about seven, eightyears ago and she said that it
apparently is this wonder plant.
So I went researching we bothdid, actually, we both went
researching online and found ahemp farm in uh in the uk, in
(05:45):
oxfordshire, and met a lot ofreally nice people who were
running it as a kind ofcooperative, uh, a non-profit
cooperative, and they, they weretelling us quite a lot of uh
what this plant has been andwhere it's been for the last
hundred years and how it's beenthrough such a been so
(06:07):
ostracized and not jumped uponas something that could be of
value and, as I looked into it,the technical side of it was
that it grows so fast and sodense and so tall and so strong
that it sequesters carbon at areally fast rate, faster than
(06:30):
most plants.
I mean bamboo's right up there,obviously, but we don't grow
bamboo in the UK.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Okay, so take us through that.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
So as it's growing, it's absorbing the carbon it's
absorbing the carbon as it'sgrowing and because if you take
a field of absorbed carbon you'dfind the biggest field you've
got just about is a hemp field,because it's taller, bigger,
closer, bigger biomass comes offof that acreage.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
So is the.
I'm going to be totally naivehere in these questions, so bear
with me going to be totallynaive here in these questions,
so bear with me.
So when we talk about the, thedifference between a hemp plant
and a pot plant, are we talkingthe same things?
That you're getting the sameyield of um cannabis as you are
(07:18):
hemp like when these fields arethey, are they essentially um
drug factories is?
Is that the byproduct ofgrowing hemp?
It's not so.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
It's totally two different things well, no, it's
very much the same thing.
It's all called cannabis, okay,everything.
Hemp is just a word, that kindof is it like a nickname for the
industrial use of cannabis?
I see, okay, and cannabis isn'tall hallucinogenic.
There are hundreds of strainsof cannabis that have no impact
(07:51):
for THC, which is thehallucinogenic.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Right, that's the hallucinogenic.
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
So what we're talking about when I talk about the big
fields of growing large amountsof it, it's the plants that
don't have that hallucinogenic.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
They look exactly like the other cannabis plants,
except they're bigger andstronger ah, okay, cool, okay,
so, but they do have some kindof like butt on them and that's
perhaps only a cbd kind of athing.
Do they all have cbd?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
yeah, you can extract cbd from them.
Okay, yeah, 95% of them haveCBD, but a much smaller
percentage have THC.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Gotcha, okay, so let's just call this the crop
for building materials, yeah,and other products, for instance
.
So where you are, how big arethese fields of this stuff?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Not big at all.
We've got the worst sort ofrules in growing in this country
than there are in othercountries like Canada.
Canada, really, to get alicense to grow hemp or cannabis
in Canada, as long as it's notTHC content, it's pretty
(09:11):
straightforward in Canada.
In the UK we have to get alicense for three years from the
Drugs and Arms Department ofthe Home Office, which is people
that don't really understandfarming or construction, but
they understand drugs andbecause it's called cannabis,
yeah it just gets lumped in withthat.
(09:31):
It gets lumped in with it.
So it's very hard to get thepermissions.
And once you have thepermissions, for instance,
you're not allowed at the momentto extract the CBD from it
because they don't understandCBD.
So we can import CBD like crazylike we do but we can't
actually as farmers, we can'tactually process for CBD and we
(09:54):
can't grow our plants to gainCBD.
We can only grow them to getthe fiber from the stalk and get
the seeds from the head, andthe seeds must be used for food,
like you're crushing it for oil, which is a very good oil, and
we've done that.
But we have to then throw awayour leaves and flowers where the
(10:15):
CBD is at its biggest amount.
We have to throw that or burnit or bury it.
We cannot process for it, whichis a crazy, ludicrous
legislation that has to changeone day.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Do you think it's perhaps part of the fact that if
they were to open that up, thenthey would have to check and
regulate different strains andthat would be even more homework
for them to do?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Well, they've already done that.
They've only allowed out ofknown strains about 160, 180
strains that are known aroundthe world.
We're only allowed 13.
They've checked 13 of them.
Oh, I see, Okay, and thenyou're right.
They stopped spending the timedoing that and said, okay,
you've got to choose one ofthese 13, and you can grow that
(11:05):
with this license.
And that is a problem, becausethe climate that they grow in is
different in every country andyou can get ones that are more
suitable to the climate in themiddle of the UK, to the climate
in the north of the UK.
If we had more again,legislation gave us more choice.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Okay, so you have a product on your website that
emulates basically corrugatedroofing or siding, a product.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, it's siding.
That's what we've used it for.
It's a rain screen.
On the side of our buildings webuilt a farmhouse out of hemp.
On the inside it's likehempcrete, which I'm sure you've
come across before.
It's a building block.
It's not concrete.
It's a form of crystallizedinner fiber of the hemp and that
(12:05):
has been used for many years asa building block in places that
want to use it.
It's about the fifth of theweight of concrete, of
traditional concrete blocks, butit's not completely
load-bearing and it needs somesort of structure to help it get
(12:26):
fully load-bearing.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Okay, that's the interesting part.
So, for instance, if we were totake a concrete cinder block,
for instance, that has thehollow core, so that cinder
block versus the hemp version ofit, so the cinder block would
be load-bearing, the other onewould not, is that?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
correct.
Yes, exactly, it would be partload-bearing and it would need
the other half of the load to beborne by either wood which can
be.
You know, I'm just talking aplank of wood per meter.
I see it's not half and a halfor anything like that in terms
of what you're seeing, what,what you're using okay.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So in terms of the um , some things you know, people
might not know at least I don'tknow, so I'm going to assume
other people might be a littlebit, you know, opaque on this as
well is uh, so it's the the thestock fibers from the plant
that are processed, and thenthey are the fibers that are in,
uh, you know, blocks, forinstance.
(13:30):
Um, are they, you know, quarterinch fibers like?
What sort of size did that didthey get, and how do they get
stripped out of the?
So what's the processing, is it?
They get crushed first and theyget into a blender kind of
situation, like an auger kind ofthing.
How does that work?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, there's processing where you separate
the fibers, the outer fibers,which are called the bast fibers
, okay, for a thousand yearsused, uh, more than a thousand
years used by the romans, uh, tofor shipping, because there's a
(14:08):
strong, super strong fiber, um,that's the bass fiber on the
outside.
So you strip away that outsidebass fiber and inside you have
this, uh, woody core, okay,which, uh, you can do a number
of different sizes, uh, youcould have a quarter of an inch
sizes and cut them all up andput them all together and then
(14:29):
add lime to that mix and a bitof water and you're mixing up
what is a version, a hempcrete,really A hempcrete.
Okay, or you could leave themlike we did in the house.
We left them about an inch ortwo long and had them so that
they were exposed in the house.
You can see on our website andon our Instagram at marjan
(14:54):
underscore farm, you can see thewebsite where I mean sorry, the
Insta where it's exposed as aninner building block because we
wanted to tell the story of howthe hemp was within the whole
house.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
So I'm just looking at that now.
So where do I see that exposedon your website, on the Margin
Farm website?
Is there a picture of it?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
You should find it on the website and better to go to
Instagram.
That's where all the photos arereally Okay At margin
underscore farm.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
At margin.
This is interesting to checkthis out.
Let me have a look here.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, you'll see, there's a bunch of articles from
magazines and newspapers andstuff and you should see the
pictures.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Okay, margin Farm, here we go.
Okay, all right, okay, oh yeah,wow, okay, yeah.
Geez, that's crazy.
Have you got the inside?
I do, yeah, I do.
So I'm actually looking at, uh,yeah, so in between, what would
(16:09):
be considered um insulation, itlooks like you have.
You have some two by fours thatare, two by sixes that are
looking like 16 inch centers,typically for typical framing,
and then yeah, and then you andthen you have hemp in there.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, they are actually cassettes 52 cassettes
that we poured the hemp.
We're laying down that wepoured the hemp in and it's set,
and then we brought them tolike a prefab oh, I see, so that
I got you right.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
So what's the dimensions of those, of those
panels then, of those?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
they're generally, they're all.
They're slightly differentaround the house, but eight,
eight foot by four foot, sort ofoh crazy.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Okay, but they're thick, though.
What's the thickness of thosethings?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
thickness varies in depending on which wall you're
doing.
Our architect has done itspecifically for what works for
the building.
We've got a brick building nextdoor to one of them, so it has
a slightly smaller thickness,but we're talking 8 to 10 inches
of that.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So that's going to be really good for acoustics.
Obviously, the silencing ofthat, so that's going to be
really good for acoustics.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
obviously the silencing of sound.
Yeah, you're in there and it'slike you're in a recording
studio Perfect that's cool, yeah, nice.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
And then I see that you have like sort of a ceiling
soft kind of material.
There Is that hemp as well.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
That isn't hemp.
It could have been, but it wasour architect's favorite panels
that were available at the time.
It's kind of a spaghetti wood,a waste wood mix panel, and
that's what she wanted to put onthe ceiling.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
So this is cool.
So I mean, you've basicallymade a model of materials for a,
you know, and the house doesn'tlook super old looking.
It actually looks pretty cool,pretty contemporary looking, and
the house doesn't look superold-looking unless it looks
pretty cool, prettycontemporary-looking.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, I mean it was, grow your own home was what we
were doing.
That's pretty cool.
You know, the field was 30meters away and we didn't know
whether the hemp would grow, butwe needed it to grow and grow
well, and it did.
And so that first year we foundprocessing a few hours away,
(18:25):
which was good, an hour away, Ishould say in Leicestershire,
which was good and we sent themround bales.
They sent their round balesinto a machine, a decorticator,
which actually separated out thetwo fibers.
There's a little film whichhelps you, show you understand
(18:48):
the process.
It's on Margin Farm and Dazeen,which is an architectural.
I don't know if you've been onDazeen D-E-Z.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
I have been on that, but I haven't seen your thing
specifically.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, Dazeen, If you put Dazeen Margin Farm you have
a little one-minute,one-and-a-half-minute film that
just shows the process fromgrowing to fixing the final rain
screen on the house.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
So it's interesting.
I'm looking at a.
You know, there's anotherwebsite, which is a Canadian one
, called Hemp Block Canada, andon there I'm seeing load-bearing
hemp blocks, hempcrete blocks,okay, which is crazy.
So yeah, they've got somefull-on.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, I mean, canada was well, you know, seemed to be
well ahead of it when westarted getting involved in
terms of having more growing,far more.
I think there was like 100,000acres growing, whereas we in
England would be lucky to find10,000 acres of hemp growing.
Because of that legislationproblem.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
So what's the?
Do you think there's just astigma around hemp in general
because it's attached to illicitdrugs that are considered
illicit in lots of places,obviously socially acceptable
these days.
But you know the cannabis is.
You know as many places in theworld.
You got cannabis on you in anairport and it's big trouble.
So you know it's stillconsidered in many places, you
(20:18):
know, problematic.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, I think the stigma is still there,
definitely, but it's not.
It's it's easing away.
It's easing away.
Now.
We need to find ways of doingthings and people are.
People are, uh, are more andmore getting on board the idea.
I think when I started seven,seven, eight years ago on this
project, uh, when I mentioned it, even to my friends, it was all
(20:40):
an eye roll of like, oh youknow, with the hemp and things,
and now that's gone away.
You say that and they saidthey've heard about it.
Right, they've read about it,or they they're more open to
understanding what, uh, what itcan do so do you think that
there's an element of um?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
let me just think here.
So when you think of there's anumber of initiatives that come
into a building project, thereis.
There's this like concrete andtraditional building materials
obviously are ubiquitous, likeeveryone uses those just because
it's like the sure thing, it'sthe.
We're just going to get thisdone If budgets are tight and
(21:21):
timelines are tight.
We're just going to get thisdone.
If budgets are tight andtimelines are tight, we're just
going to go with the oldstandard and it's tried, trusted
and true, regardless of whatit's doing to the planet.
Sometimes people just are noteven thinking about that,
especially smaller projects.
You know you see a lot ofinstitutional jobs that are
being done.
That you know, especially, youknow, government-tendered kind
(21:45):
of projects.
This is a situation where theyhave made climate commitments,
they've made environmentalcommitments and you know they
have to have their buildingspass a certain criteria in order
to move forward in general andthey've made a commitment over
time.
Those ones.
You see these alternativebuilding products being used or
being considered also with greenroofs, all that kind of stuff.
(22:07):
So as we sort of move forwardwhen, in order for products like
this to really really hit home.
There needs to be this lowestcommon denominator.
Is going to be consideringusing it.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, and I think that is slowly happening as well
, but it needs more help fromthe government.
There needs to be.
It's like a tax on smoking youshould have a tax on the harmful
products that you can buy, butalso, at the same time, what's
being developed.
Even recently in France there'sa new concrete mix which is 70%
(22:46):
of it is natural, doesn't havethe harmful carcinogenic that
you associate with concrete.
Those things are happening Forthe first time.
They're really happening, sopretty soon that's got to get
out there and be the cost thesame as doing it the bad way,
and then you can make an easychoice because it's not about
(23:06):
cost then, and I think that thatis slowly happening.
I know there's um, there was anentrepreneur, uh, at adaptivate,
another company in england thatwere doing hemp, uh, plaster,
and they're now into being cued.
They're into all the big um,you know, home depot type uh, uh
, institutions and uh, it's,it's starting to happen.
(23:27):
Um, but uh, yeah, we, we can'tlet it be that, uh, it's cheaper
to uh to to use bad stuff.
That just that equation's gotto go away yeah, no, I uh.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
It's interesting, like when I like drywall is one
of the craziest ones to me.
I just look at the process thatit that is required for us
humans to be able to look at aperfect wall, and it's all about
that, it's.
It's.
It's us like if you go into alike a louis vuitton store or a
(24:02):
I don't know high-end, you knowhigh-end goods store, uh, where
clothes, for instance, are the,are the, the item for sale where
you're, there has to be aspecific focus on that.
You see a lot of minimalistdesign in terms of highlighting
those clothes and very oftenit's just white, white walls,
(24:23):
perfect joins, perfect white,white, white looking.
You know, all the way down tothe floor, all the way into the
wall, up to the ceiling, and wehave to have drywall to
accomplish this.
And you look at what has to bedone to make that happen.
You gotta have the steel studbehind there, you gotta have the
drywall, you gotta have the.
You got to have the steel studbehind there.
You got to have the driveway,you got to have the screws, you
(24:43):
got to have the mud, you got tohave the edging, you got to have
tape, all this stuff that hasto be done in order for us to
accept that as luxury.
And when we, in order forchange to happen, there needs to
be, the model has to change.
So if a Louis Vuitton store waslike the model for what luxury
(25:12):
was, and that was not theperfect white wall, that was
something else then you wouldsee other types of brands try to
emulate that, because they'reall trying to emulate value.
They're all trying to emulatehow do we provide a feeling or
notion to our customer that isgoing to make them feel better?
(25:33):
It's going to give them thatone bit of lift that defined
themselves, defined themselves.
So this is a human condition wehave of why we end up having to
use the things that haveconsistently been able to make
us feel better, and that isconstruction that looks clean,
like for things to be white,like white.
(25:57):
White white in the world.
Think about it.
White paint like white, whitewhite in the world.
Think about it.
White paint, white drywall, mud, white building materials.
The white pigment itself hascreated so much environmental
damage.
Just that color, just that fact.
You see white in nature, butit's not that same kind of
pigment.
You know, it's a natural,occurring white.
(26:20):
If you take a white petal froma flower and you you know you're
not getting white pigment fromthat.
It just will eventually just goand trend, go transparent when
you get it wet.
So I know I'm going totallyinto the weeds here and it will
make sense at some point whatI'm trying to get at here.
But in order for us to accepthemp, for instance, as a
(26:45):
building material and make thatubiquitous along all building
material choices, I think thatit's brand, the word hemp and
all of the associations we have.
Like if I sit to say to theaverage person, hey, what do you
think of a building block or abuilding material in hemp?
(27:07):
And as soon as I say that wordhemp, they double click on that
word in their attention and awhole bunch of associated items
come into their conscious.
Right there they start to think, okay, well, hemp they'll go,
marijuana they'll go.
You know burlap kind of bagsthey'll go.
Like a weird, you know sort of,you know craft kind of material
(27:35):
, that kind of stuff, sort ofbohemian, all that kind of stuff
.
That's the what many people,when they double-click on the
word hemp, that's what comes upin their minds, that's what
they've been given over time.
So it's almost as though hemphas already cannibalized itself
as a word.
It has way too much baggage.
(27:56):
There needs to be some otherterm for this.
It needs a rebrand like badly.
It needs to be some other termfor this.
It needs a rebrand like badly.
It needs to be called somethingelse entirely.
And if it was something thathad no connection whatsoever to
the plant no connection tocannabis, no connection to CBD,
thc, any of that I think itwould have a better shot at
(28:19):
becoming this building materialor a substrate that you could
have multiple applications for.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, I mean I think you're right to a degree.
I'm hoping people are gainingmore knowledge about it and once
they do, the stigma will dieaway.
I feel it depends where it getsto.
(28:46):
We don't have to call it hemp.
I mean we're Margin Farm, we'renot Margin Hemp Farm or
anything.
When we do our corrugatedpanels, they call Margin Farm
corrugated panels and they are abrand in a way, or we are a
brand in a way.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Well, you are definitely.
You are definitely a brand, Iguess, where I'm going with it
in order for these materials tosort of be imported and exported
all over world markets.
You're going to have regulationaround that just because of the
material itself, like if youwere to say, let's say, at the
(29:30):
United States-Mexican border wehave a shipment of hemp prefab
panels that are coming throughthe border.
They're going to be like let'scheck that out.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah, and we've sent samples all over the world.
You know, 50 to Canada, 50 tothe United States, mexico,
australia, everything.
And you know they're tilesamples of natural fibers.
Yeah, you don't have to stayhome Fair enough.
Yeah, but it're tile samples ofnatural fibers.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, you don't have to stay home Fair enough, yeah,
but it is kind of interestingthough.
I mean, I think that we are inthis world of everything's a
brand, everything's an image,everything has a meaning, and it
just kind of bites ourself inorder to have progress, to move
forward.
We're so worried about what wethink of ourselves that we're
kind of wrecking the planet atthe same time.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, hopefully your podcasthelps avert some of that.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Well, we'll see.
I mean, you know, oneconversation at a time is really
all I can promise.
So let's just talk about thesecorrugated panels.
So it kind of reminds me it'sfunny that you know we're both
English and you know, in ourhome in England we had two acres
of sort of gardens.
We weren't rich, by the way, wejust lucky we had this.
(30:51):
We lived in a old militaryhospital potting shed, which is
you know where all the you'd potyour plants and all that kind
of stuff, and it had a roof, butit was, I think it was made of.
It looked like fiberglass, Ithink fiberglass, but it was
transparent or translucent oropaque.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
No it was.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
It was translucent, but it looked.
It was the exact same formfactor as your corrugated.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yes.
You know the sort of wave shape.
Uh yeah, there's uh zondulum.
There's a few differentproducts that uh that do that.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
They're plastic basically yeah, it was old
school though, but it definitelyhad fibers in it.
I could see.
I could see it had sort of ayeah, I think it was uh
reinforced, I think it wasfiberglass.
To be honest, yeah, yeah,that's old school, like english.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah, they were very efficient, but now they're going
to take 500 years to decompose.
If they do yeah, and if they do, little pieces will go into
everybody's food.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Okay, here we go.
This is the interesting part,let's just take us through.
Like what is your vision of theworld, of you know, sustainable
materials and what have youlearned over this time putting
your farmhouse together and alsoselling this corrugated?
Speaker 2 (32:20):
products to other, you know, construction projects,
etc.
There's an enormous industrythat's very hard to make any
kind of movement in, to push itacross to any other way of
thinking.
So, on a scale, on anythinglike a scale, but I've learned
(32:43):
that people are open tolistening about it and uh, that
if, if, uh, we can getinvestment, uh, the right sort
of investment.
And we've, we've had investmentand there's more, there's more
coming, and we've hooked up witha company we're building hemp
houses now as we speak who whoare inspired by us, uh, to build
(33:05):
, um, you know what.
Their plans are pretty big andthey've raised millions to begin
that and that's what it needs.
And because we don't have theinfrastructure for it at the
moment, we don't have thefacilities to do it on any kind
of scale.
It's partly because the UK mostof manufacturing went out of the
(33:27):
uk and it went to europe and itwent to india and and china and
everywhere else.
It's partly because of thatanyway.
So, um, but people are startingto talk local, they're starting
to say where did that come from?
They're looking at products andsaying which wasn't happening
seven, eight years ago.
It wasn't happening beforedavid attenborough came along
(33:47):
and did his plastic show, whichwas amazing and had a massive
impact on on what we've.
You know what we were doing toour oceans and and and
anti-plastic thing.
And people are now buyingchristmas presents on quite a
big scale where they're thinkingmore about.
I mean, plastic is still beingbought like crazy, but there is
(34:09):
a lot more thinking, a ton moresecondhand shops have come along
for people to buy clothing.
That doesn't mean that you haveto get something made really
badly and cheaply and in a nastyway in another country.
You can get it instead of itbeing shipped in.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
What do they call that?
Like single-season fashion orsomething like that?
What's the term for it?
Fast fashion?
I think it's called.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Is that what it is?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, like the czars of the world.
Well, it's actually czars notas bad as some of the other ones
.
I mean, some are just awful.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I'm sure Vancouver is a great place for that, because
I even met people there thatwere doing re-sewing old
clothings and putting togetherold jeans and re-renovating them
for new use, but I think thatthinking wasn't on anything like
the scale it is now seven,eight years ago.
So I've learned that people canpositively look at it, but it's
(35:16):
going to be very hard and wedon't know the answers is what
I've learned as well.
We don't know how long ourcorrugated panels will last in
extreme cold and extreme heat.
They've been up for seven yearsand what's happened to them in
(35:37):
that time is they've justchanged color, the way wood
changes color when it's exposedto daylight.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
You can paint those.
I guess right, or does thatlose some benefit?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
but it's gone back to the hemp color.
It's gone, it's poured its wayback to the hemp straw color.
I see it began as before.
It had the resin that took itto a dark brown.
I see, because the resin whichwe didn't talk about, but the
resin that goes into the uh, thehemp, before you thermal
compress it into the shape.
(36:09):
The resin is a farm waste resinmade of oat hulls and bagasse
and corn cob and things that arewaste on the farm and are
thrown together.
So it ends up being a darkbrown mush that you turn into a
liquid and we use it to dip ourhemp fiber mats in, to then
(36:32):
thermal compress them into thecorrugated shape.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
So I think there's two points that you made there.
One, specifically, is aroundconstruction that it's so vast
and then it's sort of difficultto break through and create
change within.
And you know I would say thatyou know people are doing.
(36:59):
The majority of constructionprojects, keep in mind, are
they're reacting to what thecustomer wants, not what they
want.
So I don't think theconstruction industry
necessarily is to blame.
Like those hardworking peoplewho are putting projects
together, are putting theirblood, sweat and tears to make
something happen.
(37:19):
They're mostly just deliveringon someone else's vision of
something that wants to be doneand they're getting paid a fee
for it.
And you know, I think, thatthere is.
It comes to if significantchange needs to be made, it
(37:41):
needs to come from the companiesand the individuals who are
creating these projects.
That's where the push needs tocome from.
It needs to come from the top,because a construction company
is not going to risk not gettinga job because they're pushing a
particular product.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
This won't do it well , I think it also needs to come
from government.
What's happening fairlyrecently is in the World Court
in the Hague, they're bringingin ecocide, which is a crime
like genocide.
Oh, ecocide, okay, yeah,something that will be used to
(38:26):
charge companies and individualswho are doing bad for the
environment.
Now that's a massive stepwhether they can police it and
put it through and get this tohappen.
But if that way of thinkingcame from the companies as well,
and the governments, it'sparticular.
If governments say, no, that'sillegal, you can't do that,
(38:49):
that's ecocide.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, well, they can barely police, you know, war
crimes, yeah, yeah, I doubt thatit's going to happen.
But you know, maybe you know,maybe the I always find that you
know violations of things thatare difficult to or sorry are
difficult to or sorry or easierto collect.
The levies, for instance, orthe or the fines for typically
(39:14):
go through.
For instance, you'll noticethat, um, let's, let's say that
a particular bylaw in a, in a ina city, um, let's say you're
not allowed to cycle on thesidewalk, okay, or on what do
you call it in England, sidewalk?
No, it's a pavement, pavement.
Oh, on the pavement, chap.
Yes, so you're not allowed tocycle on the pavement?
(39:38):
Well, that would mean a bylawofficer would have to stop
people who are doing that, havesome sort of altercation and
then try and find a way becausethere's no licensing on the
bikes to then go and have tofind a way to collect the fine.
Okay, total hassle.
Whereas parking tickets arefantastic because there's a
(39:59):
license plate and there's a rulethat's posted and they get to
passively stick a ticket on,create a record and then attach
it to some other license and beable to collect the money.
It's zero friction whatsoever,they just get to slap this thing
and collect.
So I think and the reason I'mbringing that up is that if
(40:20):
there was this eco side, forinstance, it would be very easy
to just have policy and be ableto just slap on fines,
specifically, and then theywould have to collect.
So, rather than, if we thinkabout war crimes, war crimes are
kind of like having to stop theperson bicycling on the
(40:41):
pavement you have to havealtercation.
So perhaps, there, you know, Ithink there's something to be
said for that.
So perhaps there, you know, Ithink there's something to be
said for that.
These passive fines, uh, maybethey start, you know, uh, on a
tighter jurisdiction, you knowlike local towns, and then it
goes to certain counties, andthen it goes from then to
countries and you know thencontinents, etc.
So maybe it can sort of expandthat way but.
(41:03):
I think that that that makesperfect sense in terms of you
know what we're doing to theplanet.
You know I think I kind of.
I keep going back to drywall.
That one, to me, is the biggestoffender.
Like I look at it and I'm likeGod, like what have you ever
seen?
Like.
So you know, I renovated aproperty recently and we took a
wall down.
(41:23):
I'm thinking, shit, where's allthe stuff going?
And it's awful.
Like you got drywall with paint, three layers of paint on it,
there's glue, there's like allthis stuff, and it's not useful.
It's got screws in it.
So like these materials.
And then you go to a building,a particular garbage dump, and
(41:46):
they say, no drywall.
You're thinking, okay, well,where do I have to take that?
I have to take that to aspecial place because they have
to do something specific to it.
But you know, we're in thistime right now, where we're all
excited about the new shinything, like I'm all excited
about the new clean wall I'mgoing to get, and I'm not
thinking about where the oldcrappy one that I had to take
(42:07):
down went.
So do you think it's sort ofjust a change in mindset?
We have to sort of snapourselves together.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
No, I think it's an investment, and An investment in
what, though?
specifically?
Investment in getting you canmake a drywall out of natural
fibers so that when you dump ityou're not doing any harm to the
environment.
So, is there a hemp drywallproduct?
There is, we don't have it.
(42:36):
There is one that's comingthrough the company I was
mentioning, the plaster company,adaptivate adaptivate they
they've got one that's justreleasing, uh, this company that
we're working with, hemp span,who are doing the um houses in
the uk, they're look, they'redeveloping something, uh, and it
(42:58):
you know, it's not.
It's not there it needs to be.
It needs to have money thrownat it and and, uh, it can and it
can be got.
And what you said earlier aboutit being it can't be the
expensive option, no, exactly.
So, somebody, the investment'sgot to also be in the fact
you're not going to make anymoney out of it until it reaches
(43:20):
a level of spread and thereforebecomes viable.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah.
So I mean, I was just lookingat, you know, hemp drywall
panels and it's interesting thatthey, because I think you kind
of need everything to go alongwith it.
Obviously you need the.
You know the gypsum that's in adrywall board.
Yeah, you know that's thatpowder.
Yeah, you know that's thatpowder.
Yeah, so you know that therewould obviously be what the hemp
(43:52):
would replace, and then I guessyou could have a hemp paper
that would be the front, thepaper side.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Yeah, well, hemp paper from the pulp has been
done.
It's been there forever.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yeah, we've been printing hemp business cards for
, you know, 15 years now.
Yeah, we've been printing hempbusiness cards for 15 years now.
But then I mean the reason thatthe drywall and I'm getting
specifically into drywallbecause I just find it
interesting, you know, havingthe opportunity to talk to you
about this and sort of envision.
(44:25):
We know how things could be inespecially your farmhouse if you
would have had a panel that youcould have made perfectly, that
you could have painted over,you could use, you know, sort of
more environmentally, um,responsible paint perhaps.
But yeah, clay paint yeah, ifyou would have had, you know, a
drywall or a drywall replacementpanel, and it came with all the
(44:47):
different things.
Like you know, I watch when you,when they put the corner bead
on, they there's a specific glueversion of a drywall paste that
sticks that in.
You know the differentcompounds that they have, and
there's there's the finishingcut, there's like the, the main
compound and there's a finishingcompound.
But if you had all of thosecomplementary products, the
entire drywall system and it wasin hemp, and then let's just
(45:11):
say I think what would makesense from the governmental side
is is you would get a rebatefor using them.
So I don't think, like in termsof the manufacturing side, to
get to that economy.
The economy is a scale in orderto be able to provide that much
product and be able to providethat much product and be able to
compete against a tried andtrue drywall industry, you're
(45:33):
obviously going to get some.
There's going to be politicalpushback there.
You know there's going to becompanies that aren't going to
want those ones to come along.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, and there'll be companies that will adapt to it
and, uh, want to be at the headof it, at the head of a river,
any kind of a revolution.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
who's smarter, who are not, you know, trying to
fight it hopefully well,hopefully, yeah, um, but it just
would make sense if, if youlike, I I've always thought with
what what is very, very, verycool is for there to be, on
every building that's built, forthere to be a plaque that has
(46:15):
perhaps a QR code on it or ithas a building materials listed
on it.
That is the.
It's the story of the intentionof the humans that made that,
and I think that that's animportant thing, especially as
you get to larger buildings,institutional buildings.
(46:36):
The effort that went intomaking those less of an
environmental impact, I thinkneeds to be advertised, and
we're in a world now wherepeople virtue everything.
Everything anybody does thesedays is trying to add some
little bit of splash of color totheir identity.
It doesn't matter if it's acompany, it doesn't matter if
(46:56):
it's a person.
Companies are an extension ofpeople.
Typically, people want to workfor companies that have good
brands and do good things andmakes them feel better.
They can be at a barbecue andsay I work at company XYZ and
they go oh, wow, god, yeah,that's fantastic.
You know you must be XYZ kindof person if you get to work
there.
All of these types of you know,altruistic motivations that
(47:18):
people have can actuallypositively affect the planet if
we architect it the right way.
So if you have that plaquethat's on the front of the
building, there people get tovirtue that and the result is no
one wants to put well, we usethe worst materials and wreck
the planet the most on thatplaque.
There's just no way.
It would always have to be apositive.
(47:39):
So it pushes people to be proudof things.
So we're in the Instagram world.
If a company's all finishedbuilding a build and they're all
standing around the particulararea of the entrance or whatever
, and there's the plaque andthey're all like here you go,
this is what we did.
Wow, that's an Instagram moment.
(48:00):
You have to do it.
We need to be in the.
You have to do it.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
And once that starts, to kick in all of these, you
know, alternative buildingproducts.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
They're all going to kick ass yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Well, I think you're absolutely right and there
should be that and there shouldbe a way of saying the amount of
carbon coming into that projectand the amount of carbon going
out, and how neutral, or how Imean negative, is positive, but
if we can get that for them toall give us more, that we've
(48:39):
drawn more carbon out in makingthat building than you have.
You're ahead of it and you havesome sort of a QR code that
tells you exactly how thosecalculations have been made and
how they add up Now, how themathematics work in that.
That's what we, as you say, ifwe get used to that in the
(49:00):
future, I think we're, you know,in five, ten years' time, I
think we'll be there if peoplekeep, you know, wanting, wanting
it, and uh, um, and it keepsgrowing and people understand it
and you know there's a wholenew generation of school
children who are coming throughand they're learning this in
their classroom now, which I'min the uk anyway, it's great.
(49:24):
They're learning about theimportance of the soil, the
importance of what we do andwhat we release on the
atmosphere and the badness ofcertain things, and hopefully
they can be changed with thesenew generations.
(49:44):
I mean I'm really excited.
I've got grandchildren.
In fact there's another one, afourth one on the way and you
know, I think for their futurethey'll grow up in a different
way where they do care aboutthis.
I know it's very hard to changepeople's mindset now, but there
will be a mindset that startsin a better place.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah Well, the only thing I would hope for the UK is
that there is a.
The new replacements of thesociety there are going to give
a crap as much as the altruisticBrits who have spent all this
time becoming conscious.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
That's.
The only threat, I think, iswith this global world we have.
We've got people moving in andout of countries and bringing
their baggage from one to theother, and all the work that
we're doing, as you say,teaching school children to do
these things, these are luxuryinitiatives.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
These are the initiatives that you do when all
things are okay and you are notstruggling just to survive yeah
, although growing understandingabout growing in in a world
where you know there's famineeverywhere, you know
understanding how to at least Imean it's impossible to cure
(51:11):
what, the scale of what is goingon.
But if we, you know, if thatknowledge can go in everywhere,
go into all generations of allcultures, then it's going to
make a difference in everywhere.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Yeah, well, hopefully .
Well, good on you, man.
I think that's pretty cool thestuff that you're doing, and,
yeah, it'd be interesting tocheck back with you another time
and see if you've got some moreconstruction projects.
I think it's an important thingto be doing, maybe looking at
those blocks, looking at someother things you could be doing
there, and that drywall side ofthings.
(51:49):
I mean, that is, even if, evenif, yeah, even if you could make
this would be very cool if youcould make a um uh, corner bead
made of hemp or a j channel likea j edge, which is just that
little edge that goes on theedge drywall, but that was made
of hemp, like the entire hempsystem.
(52:10):
There's so much to be donethere and I think, I think you
know the first step of you doingthe corrugated panels is pretty
cool, but it just shows thatyou could do anything.
That is, you know, if it wasinside, the opportunity is
inside, I think, because wedon't know what it's going to do
outside.
You know, for the elements, etcetera.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
But all the acoustical stuff yeah there's so
much opportunity inside, yeah,yeah pretty cool.
All right, well, this has beencool, cool.
Yeah, thanks, Steve, and yeah,we'll see what happens over the
next few years.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Yeah, so your website .
Let's just go through thatagain.
So you have margint margin,farmcom, and then you're on
linkedin, obviously, and then oninstagram I don't think we're
on linkedin, are we?
Speaker 2 (52:56):
I'm not on it.
I know that you're not.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
You're not on.
I think we found you, I thinkthrough linkedin, at one point,
but anyway, maybe not um are you, I might have signed up for it
about 10 years ago, but I'venever used it.
Okay, and then so on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
Yeah, the Insta is the best way because that keeps
pretty current and it's gotgaining followers on that.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
So that is Margins.
So M-A-R-G-E-N-T underscorefarm is where that can be found.
All right, well, that's prettyawesome.
Okay, steve.
Well, it was a really pleasure.
It's a great pleasure to meetyou, and best of luck with
everything.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
And thank you very much for your time.
Okay, all the best, all right,speak soon.
Okay, thanks, see you, okay,thanks.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
Bye.
Well, that does it for anotherepisode of the Site Visit.
Thank you for listening.
Be sure to stay connected withus by following our social
accounts on Instagram andYouTube.
You can also sign up for ourmonthly newsletter at
sitemaxsystemscom.
Slash thesitevisit, whereyou'll get industry insights,
pro tips and everything you needto know about the SiteVisit
(54:06):
podcast and Sitemax, the jobsite and construction management
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and beyond.
Sitemax is also the engine thatpowers this podcast.
All right, let's get back tobuilding.
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