Colorado company brings America back to the future
By Joy Beckerman
Morris Beagle of Tree Free Hemp is pioneering the reintroduction of hemp paper into American business and marketing. His passion for delivering professional printing on 100% sustainable, tree-free, hemp-blended paper is infectious.
Beagle is motivated by more than just the myriad environmental benefits of hemp-blended paper. After humans moved past clay, stone and wax tablets and papyrus scrolls, approximately 75-90% of the world’s paper was made from hemp until the late 1800s. And Beagle understands that knowing one’s history is key to understanding one’s destiny.
Until modern times, paper was actually made from worn-out and discarded hemp cloth from rope, sails, clothing, diapers, home furnishings and rags. The term “rag paper” is derived from this use. In fact, it was a regional rag shortage in Europe that led to the 1879 invention of the chemical and mechanical processing of wood into pulp consisting of almost pure cellulose fibers.
This is known as the “kraft” process (German for “strength”) and incorporates the treatment of wood chips with a mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide that breaks the bonds that bind lignin to the cellulose. Lignin is the glue-like polymer in plants and trees that gives them rigidity and protection against climate, pathogens and pests.
Beagle has a background in the production and music business. In the mid-1990s, he founded a record company in Colorado called Hapi Skratch Records that also specialized in CD and DVD packaging and merchandising. It was at this time that he first found himself at a hemp store, “The Hemperor’s New Clothes,” in Fort Collins. That store’s owner, an inspiring hemp activist named Carolina Westers, turned out to be a significant figure in Beagle’s journey, mentoring him on the history and struggle of industrial hemp. Beagle learned from and worked with Westers on grassroots and legislative hemp efforts until the economic downturn in 2002 led to the closure of The Hemperor’s New Clothes.
That same economic downturn played a role in the implosion of the physical media industry (CDs and DVDs). Beagle bobbed and weaved his way through the morphing music business, in good company with millions of other American entrepreneurs as they readjusted and forged their ways though the first decade of the 21st Century, searching for a new and more prosperous day. All the while, industrial hemp was on his mind and heart.
When Beagle first learned of the Colorado Hemp Bill in 2012, he knew that was his cue. While he is still involved in certain aspects of the music business, he knew it was time to focus on aligning his life’s work with something that would make a difference. So the Colorado Hemp Company, a hemp merchandising company, was born.
At the time, the only hemp merchandise that could be found in brick-and-mortar stores were food items and body care products. Most hemp-related products were only available online. Beagle began picking up the lines of certain manufacturers’ hemp goods. He pounded the phone and pavement, but it was difficult and slow-going, as he discovered he was still combatting the stigma surrounding hemp.
“Can you smoke that shirt?”
“Will the lip balm make my customers high?”
Finally, he was struck with the idea of combining his extensive printing and merchandising background with the reintegration of hemp paper, which could lead to the reduction of wood pulp and environmental toxins. Beagle grew exceedingly interested in the paper element of hemp, its environmental impact and potential for wide-open growth. He began to learn the devastating details of the toxicity and planetary damage caused by the tree paper industry, while availing himself of the environmental details of hemp-blended paper manufacturing.
Trees are high in lignin; hemp has a naturally lower lignin content — as low as 3% in the primary bast fiber (the outside skin of the hemp stalk), which is the part of the plant used to manufacture paper in modern kraft processing paper mills. A lower lignin content reduces the need for using acids and harsh chemicals during the pulping process. Because of hemp’s lower content of lignin, which is brown in color, hemp pulp is lighter in color than tree pulp and doesn’t require bleaching. However, hemp pulp can easily be whitened with oxygen or hydrogen peroxide instead or requiring chlorine like tree paper. The existing tree paper industry is a significant source of water contamination, meaning a shift to hemp paper could reduce water pollution.
Additionally, wood contains only 30-50% cellulose, compared to 75-85% for hemp. The high cellulose content of hemp means fewer chemicals and less energy needed to process it into pulp. And hemp paper can be recycled up to eight times, in contrast to tree paper, which can only be recycled a few times at best. Hemp paper is very durable, stretches minimally, and is mold- and UV-light resistant. Acid-free hemp paper, like that made by Tree Free Hemp, is archival quality, resistant to decomposition and yellowing.
But Beagle, who leads Tree Free Hemp with support from his business partner Elizabeth Knight and business development manager Chris Wogan, found that sourcing hemp-blended paper was basically impossible — not just in the U.S., but worldwide. They realized they’d have to manufacture it themselves.
In the U.S., there are only about three paper mills that can process hemp bast fiber into pulp. Existing machinery in U.S. paper mills isn’t suitable for pulping annual fiber plants like hemp, flax and kenaf because the modern paper industry began when the kraft process was invented, and thus developed around the use of timber. On a commercial scale, only hemp tissue and rolling papers are being manufactured. Those are coming out of China, which is the largest exporter of industrial hemp goods into the U.S. Plus, not all hemp bast fiber is the same — one must source particular hemp varieties that produce bast fiber ideal for paper manufacturing. There is a limited global supply and much of what Beagle uses is imported from the Netherlands.
Beagle’s team has worked with Rick and Shari Smith of Green Field Paper Company on a variety of projects. One exciting example is the first hemp-blended paper made from domestic legal hemp in more than 100 years. They obtained legally harvested hemp fiber from Kentucky (Mike Lewis), Colorado (Ryan Loflin) and Vermont (Robin Alberti and Ken Manfredi) and worked with Green Field to produce hand-batch hemp paper, some 100% hemp paper, and some paper that blends 65% hemp with 35% recycled cotton.
Tree Free Hemp is also partnering with the cutting-edge Colorado company PureHemp to use its patented biorefining technology to create pulp from the entire hemp stalk (both the bast and hurd fiber, which is the inner woody core of the hemp stalk) through a process using fewer chemicals and less energy than kraft processing. Beagle is on the PureHemp Board of Advisors and is in the process of moving Tree Free Hemp’s headquarters to Fort Lupton, Colorado, where PureHemp is located.
Most paper on the market today is 80-90% virgin wood pulp with 10-20% post-consumer recycled paper blended in. Tree Free Hemp paper is made of 25% hemp, 75% post-consumer recycled paper and never contains virgin wood pulp. Sustainable hemp-blended paper may even be more ideal than 100% hemp paper because hemp is actually an excellent binding agent and works well as an additive.
Tree Free Hemp has several weights currently available: 110-pound cover stock for CD sleeves and heavy stock posters; 70-pound light cover stock for posters; 80-pound text weight for flyers, brochures, posters and books; and 20-pound text for basic printing and copying. Beagle said he likes the textured sides of his paper because people can feel it and connect with the hemp material.
Since embarking on this endeavor, Beagle has tested different types of hemp-blended paper on different types of printing machines. He is mastering the unique needs and requirements of printing on hemp-blended, textured paper. The company will be printing renowned hemp author Doug Fine’s 28-page book, “First Legal Harvest: Hemp Returns to Humanity,” on its 80-pound text weight. That printing was the first of its kind in at least 100 years. Tree Free Hemp is not only bringing America back to the future; the company is the future.
Joy Beckerman is the president of Hemp Ace International and president of the Washington chapter of the Hemp Industries Association.