The Ben Draper Interview: Rewriting the Future with an Ancient Fiber

Imagine paper that’s stronger than what you use now, made without harsh chemicals, grown in weeks instead of decades, and ready to compost in your backyard. That’s the promise driving our talk with Ben Draper of the Hemp Paper Company, and it starts with a simple question: what if the future of packaging isn’t trees or plastic, but an ancient fiber returning at scale?

We dig into how industrial hemp differs from CBD and marijuana, and why the fiber-and-grain side matters for real-world products. Ben walks us through the lost decades—policy confusion, outdated stigma, and dismantled supply chains—that delayed hemp’s comeback. Then he maps the rebuild: partnering with mills, proving performance with high-strength paper bags and boards, and targeting cartons for brands that want premium packaging without the environmental hangover. Along the way, you’ll hear why hemp’s rapid growth and low-input processing can slash water use and chemicals, how cover-cropping helps pull toxins from soil, and why hemp paper can be recycled more times than typical tree paper, locking up carbon for longer.

The heart of the episode is circularity. Hawaii becomes a prototype for a full loop: grow hemp, decorticate locally, explore hemp-derived fuels to power processing, convert to products that either reenter the system or safely compost. We talk candidly about the pitfalls of plastic bans without composting infrastructure, the economics of early-stage materials, and creative pricing models that make adoption easier. If you care about sustainable packaging, microplastics, soil health, or practical climate wins, this conversation brings a grounded, ambitious route forward—one bag, one box, one supply chain at a time.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who works in packaging or retail, and leave a review with one question you want answered about hemp materials next time.

Link to my website: The Toilet Paper Salesman ™ – Who Says Selling Toilet Paper isn’t Glamorous? ™

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Link to David Mirarchi's website: David Mirarchi

Link to RJ Schinner Co, Inc: RJ Schinner | Home

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Background

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome to the Toilet Paper Salesman Podcast. My name is Mike Morarki, and I'm thrilled to be here today with a very special guest, Ben Draper, who is with the Hemp Paper Company. Ben, welcome to the podcast. Excited to talk with you. We're going to learn today about a crop that has lots of history, but more recently has become known again. And uh so we're going to dig into hemp. But first, Ben, I'd like to ask a little bit about your background. Tell us about where you grew up, where you went to school, what you did, and how you got into hemp.

Discovering Hemp Through Packaging

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Yeah, so uh originally, a long time ago, I'm from Oregon, uh Pacific Northwest. Typical small town lifestyle in my town of Albany, Oregon, where I'm originally from. We actually had a paper mill. It was right off of I-5. And usually the only reason anybody knew that we existed is because of the smell of that paper mill when you drove by. So maybe that's part of what kind of ingrained in my mind of how I ended up long term ended up in uh paper packaging. But but yeah, and I ended up um graduating, started college, then I took some time off and I moved out to Hawaii, which was like the best thing that ever happened to me. I, you know, connected with nature and just kind of the aloha lifestyle was really great. Spent a few years there, then ended up jumping over to Los Angeles, spent, I guess it's been 15 or so years out in LA, just kind of jumping back and forth between Hawaii and then, yeah, and I ended up starting a product supply company that was in around uh, I want to say 2017, 2018, providing essentially food packaging items and uh different just random things to companies uh with manufacturing in China. Ended up meeting a guy that took me out to China and showed me all about how you manufacture and how you import and all this stuff. So I took a stab at uh starting a company. I always had kind of an entrepreneurial spirit. And then um, next thing I know, I'm you know, I'm uh I've got a company and I'm I'm getting all these packaging uh items at different coffee shops and um, you know, different packaging. For example, there was a company called Hemp Hydrate, and these guys reached out to me saying, like, hey, can you get our our carton packaging? So um I said, probably. It was basically to store their water bottles in. They're like, Can you do it with hemp though? And I was like, Well, what's hemp? So I went down this, you know, rabbit hole essentially of looking into hemp. To some degree, I had inevitably kind of an existential epiphany, you could say, is that, you know, I've contributing to a lot of the problem with plastic and packaging. And then I saw the hemp is the possibility, the capability of solving some world problems, as extreme as that might sound. And you know, I went into this as a skeptic, thinking like, well, snake oily, kind of like hemp can do everything. Hemp can be the best, uh, you know, it's good for the soil, it's good for the the sequestering carbon, it's it's stronger, it's like, no way. So, anyways, I end up going down this pathway, figuring out like, well, where is it? And essentially, no one was making it. There was, there's like three or four companies that did like a blended version of like 15% or 30%. But I kind of had this purist mindset of like, where's the real stuff? Where's the hundred percent? And then eventually I just made a life decision and just thought, I'm gonna figure this out. I always say, like, I'm smart enough to understand it, dumb enough to think I can do it, and stubborn enough to just keep going. And so that really kind of pushed me into this phase where I was like, look, I always had somewhat of a delusion that I was gonna change the world, as we all did, I think, when we were young. And then I kind of was just dumb enough to keep thinking that and then eventually saw hemp as the path for that to become reality. So, yeah, so, anyways, I ended up, you know, going down this rabbit hole and figuring out how to make the hemp paper packaging. And I can obviously get into more of that, but that's kind of like in a nutshell, kind of the pathway that I got there.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

So when you say hemp could solve the world's problem, you kind of say that, and I think most people right now, most people don't really know about much about hemp other than the marijuana side, other than the medicinal side of hemp or of marijuana, same plant. When you say that, when you make that statement, it could change the world, what does that mean? In what way? How do you mean they can change the world?

Can Hemp Really Change The World

Industrial Hemp 101: Fiber Vs CBD

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, no, and I invite everybody to be skeptical because, you know, I think that uh we're in kind of a we're kind of inundated with with greenwashing. And, you know, everybody's got the revolutionary new product and this and that. And, you know, I think that it it deserves a little bit of life. What are you talking about? Because, you know, it almost sounds too good to be true. But essentially, you know, the big difference here is that, you know, obviously people know about marijuana. There's a lot of feelings about that, whether you're pro or anti-but then there's this whole other side uh when it comes to industrial hemp. Now, if you break hemp down kind of two categories, it's a cousin to marijuana, but it has no psychoactive effects. But there is the grain and the fiber side, and then there's the CBD side. So I think uh a lot of people are familiar with the CBD because there was a quite a trend, right? So, you know, it was in tinctures and drinks and everything in between, and everybody thought that was the elixir that's gonna reverse aging and reduce inflammation. Now, I don't know that that's not true, but I'm focused more on the other side of the more tangible thing that I can actually measure and know for sure. That's the fiber and the grain side. What that means is essentially when you look at the property of hemp, essentially it's it's a raw material, it's a fiber that has applications into just about every major industry. So you can take industrial hemp from the fiber side, you can turn it into paper, plastic, building materials, clothing, textile, and then I think there's somewhere around 20,000 applications. When people hear me say it can change the world, they want a little bit more context of how that could be possible. So when you look at hemp from the sustainability side, it's a material that can pull toxins and harsh metals out of the ground. It also sequesters more carbon from the atmosphere or filters, uh, a simpler word, is pulls it from the atmosphere, and it does a better job than trees do. The idea is that if you can grow hemp, you can also help with mitigating the deforestation because a lot of a good percentage of deforestation that is a byproduct of our paper consumption. It's those areas. Think of on the paper side, you know, it requires, you know, less water. It can grow in 30 days rather than three decades. And so just when you look at the sustainability side, the metrics of this material are better, more sustainable. And when you when you look at the strength of the fiber, it's stronger. So for us, you know, we have obviously, I picked paper as the path for me for now. Who knows what will come from the future because it has all these applications. But we looked at it thinking like, well, our paper is backyard compostable. Our paper is two times stronger than tree paper. And so just from the strength and um the premium side of what this fiber can do, there's a lot of sustainability benefits as well. You know, it doesn't require pesticides and herbicides. And so there's just a lot of key things that I think from the sustainability standpoint, a lot of people can rally behind. But as we know, when it comes to the actual functional side of it, companies care more about what is the actual benefit, you know, other than just being able to greenwash, so to speak, and promote sustainability. Because, you know, when you think of the effects of what this fiber can do environmentally, you know, that's too big of a picture for most people, especially businesses are looking at how can we actually implement this into what we're doing in a way that benefits on a practical scale. So in a nutshell, just adds all these environmental benefits.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Okay, so let's step back a little bit and get some history because hemp is a crop grown 10,000 years ago. It's a crop that has a rich history, and even a rich history in our country. Can we just step back a little bit and why don't you start, I don't know, somewhere where even just in the United States, as we started our country, how hemp impacted our economy, our country, to the point where it was somewhere around, I think, 1937 or eight when it was banned. So if you want to talk about that a little bit and and the applications back then and how they used it, and even things about how it helped us win World War I and World War II, there's some amazing facts there that I think people uh it's important for them to understand to get some context in that hemp isn't some new fiber, some thing that we just discovered. This is something that has a lot of history.

History, Bans, And Lost Supply Chains

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Yeah, it's this is a you know material that's been around, I mean, I guess you could say it could be millions of years. Uh, who really knows? But when it comes to the functioning stuff, I mean, like, you know, the Chinese were making paper with hemp thousands of years ago. So its ability, you know, even if you look at uh, you know, there were a few presidents that grew hemp. It wasn't the Declaration of Independence that was written on hemp, but some of the drafts of it were written on hemp paper. When you look at the history of hemp, it is basically like the fiber of the future, but it is a material of the past. And I think that it's just kind of reigniting the awareness around it of what you can do with the actual material. So the United States military was using, um, they actually had a campaign around hemp to promote hemp as kind of helping to, I think it was like hemp for victory. And the idea was that you essentially use hemp as like a rope. And so for a lot of the Navy at the time, they were utilizing the strength of the hemp rope and just recognizing that this material has a lot of applications that would really benefit kind of the military during these wars. And so oddly, you know, we we had this big push of, you know, hey, let's bring hemp, whatever. And this is where the kind of conspiracy side of things kind of start to blend into this, which is, you know, there was like this Hearst family, and the idea or the the theory is that they helped to lobby against hemp because they saw it as a disruption to their industry, which they had kind of monopolized, ends up getting banned, and then we kind of lose sight of this fiber that could really revolutionize and almost terraform Earth. I mean, when you think of the capacity of what it can do, uh, you know, the military understood it. They broke it down and looked at the kind of the structural benefits of this material and saw that it was at many applications. And so I think that it just comes down to you know, people recognizing that this isn't just some, if it a lot of people say, well, if it's so great, how come it's an art already a thing? And the problem is it was it was illegal to grow in the United States until 2018. So I think that it's just a it's just a matter of trying to figure out how to kind of reawaken this and rebrand this material. And, you know, because I think there's a lot of people too who have like heard of it. It's like this hemp, hemp is like this hippie thing, you know, and that I've had a couple of people tell me, like, oh yeah, my dad used to make uh shirts out of hemp and all this different stuff. And and I think that's kind of fun, and there's a lot of opportunities to brand and market hemp. But yeah, it's got a long history both for mankind, but also even the United States has has a lot of experience with hemp and a and a relationship to it. And so I think it just it just needs to kind of gain traction and continue to which it has continued to do.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

So then when there was a law passed, I believe, that put a tax on hemp that made it just so expensive that it just kind of went away. And the way you glad I heard it, I think it was Hearst, and maybe DuPont was involved in that because DuPont was just coming out with plastics at the time, and hemp was a threat to plastics because of the amount of uses and everything. And then there was a third person as well. That's that's my understanding. But anyway, so they put the tax on it, they passed the law. Most people, and they called it marijuana, and they when they demonized marijuana and made it seem like if you smoke marijuana, you're gonna be crazy and all this stuff. But when when they passed the legislation, my understanding that most of the people who passed it didn't realize that marijuana was the same thing as hemp. And they didn't realize that they passed the law of essentially banning the growing of hemp. And so, and that was the effect of it. So hemp goes away for 80 years, now all of a sudden it comes back, the supply chains are completely gone, the mindset of people, you know, you're talking about 80 years later. We don't have any recall of hemp in any way because it was 80 years before. And so you're almost rebuilding the whole thing from scratch, which is what you're doing.

Rebuilding Farming And Processing

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Yeah, and and the interesting thing too is that so what ended up happening, you know, 2018 hits, you know, there's a lot of momentum and a lot of excitement around hemp being federally legal, you know, industrial hemp. Basically, what I've understood happened is that you had a lot of innovators and ambitious entrepreneurs who went around recognizing, wow, hemp is amazing. It's the fiber of the future, it's gonna do all these amazing things. So they go around and they promote this to farmers, right? Because eventually you need farmers to grow the material. And so they go around and they, you know, CBD and uh, you know, textiles and uh fiber and all these things. So they go and talk to these farmers and say, hey, you should grow hemp. It's gonna be the future of fiber. And so the farmers say, Great, it's exciting. The innovators and the entrepreneurs tell them there's a lot of money in this. You know, you grow it, we'll be able to sell it. Don't worry about it. Well, I think what happened was there was a lot of ambition, but on the processing side, that industry was not established. So what you ended up having was a lot of farmers got burned by the fact that they grew all of this hemp and they were ready to sell it. But when it came time to selling it, there was nobody to really buy it because the other side of this business wasn't established, these processors, these manufacturers. And then COVID hits. That also causes another hiccup in kind of what can happen with hemp. So unfortunately, that drove this demand and drove the production of growing hemp down. And so it took a while, obviously, for that to build back up. And we needed companies like mine, and you know, there's hemp plastics and a couple other guys out there that are really taking charge and helping push this forward. But essentially, you know, we just didn't have the infrastructure. And so a lot of people were literally growing hemp here, taking either processing it or just sending the raw material overseas to China or whatever else. And they're literally making uh the products over there because we didn't have the machinery, especially when you look in at the textile side, because we don't have cotton gins and it's a whole thing. So I think that's kind of like figuring out, recognizing that it's really important for us to figure out the path to manufacturing and processing, because that's an instrumental part of the farmers actually making money because they're the people we have to rely on the most, that farmers are the hardest working industry in the United States or one of. Um, we want to incentivize them, we want to get them on board, but at the end of the day, we we can't just promise them something. And I think a lot of them got burned by this fact that just wasn't ready. And so now we're in a position where we are having these avenues of of you know application. And so it's helping. And so I think it's just a matter of time before we continue to validate the material and validate products in the market, which is what I'm really focused on doing with our paper bags and our cartons and some of the other the other products that we've positioned ourselves to work on.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Over those past 80 years, plastics have become a tremendous burden into our environment. Still to this day, tons of plastics being sold all over the place in all kinds of applications. And then just creating the issues that we have in the oceans, PFAST issues, which is a different thing with chemicals. So, what you're saying that hemp could potentially solve these issues that we have. So with all the damage that we've done to our planet and to the environment, what you're saying is hemp potentially or practically could fix some of these problems. How so?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

I typically tell people, think of it like you were sitting around at the table, you know, 100 years ago and some guy comes up and and says, Hey, I I found this black oily stuff in the ground. I think we could really do something with it. And instead of that, if they would have came with hemp instead as that material, imagine how that could terraform and transform everything that we touch. Because plastic is essentially in just about everything. Everything we consume it, we wear it, we you know, we probably breathe it uh in the microplastics and all these things. Now, the reality is that if you can make plastic with hemp, then you change this whole dynamic of pollutants and you know what what our bodies are exposed to. And you can essentially create a situation where you can create the same product and stronger, by the way, because Henry Ford, he was using hemp plastics in some of his vehicles. You know, and so I think that there's definitely the path for that. It's just a matter of getting people to recognize the benefits of it and realizing the you know, really the extraordinary possibilities of how this can revolutionize everything. Dramatic as that sounds.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Right. Henry Ford, I had heard, created a vehicle made of hemp, and he was going to use hemp to fuel it. Right before the laws were passed banning hemp, he had this vehicle already made, which is incredible. So we can get back to that. So we talk about um right now where EV cars are are the big thing. Who knows? Maybe we have hemp powered cars at some point.

Plastics, Microplastics, And Hemp Alternatives

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Maybe we have yeah, biodiesels and yeah, yeah, there's definitely you can make fuel with hemp as well. And in fact, you know, so I've I've spent all obviously a lot of time in Hawaii and we're working right now. We actually working on growing and processing um out there, and we're gonna create a pilot program of what we're doing in the states. We're we're planning to do out there with our paper, but we want to be able to supply to control that supply chain and be able to create a system that's replicable that we can essentially license out and show people how to actually do it. And you know, many people have tried to do this, but I think what ends up happening is because hemp can do everything, it makes it forces people into this position to be hyper ambitious in a way that they kind of, when you can do everything, you don't know what to do and how to do it well. So we're really targeted in this one area. We want to create that system, we want to prove how what that model looks like and how it's replicable. And one of the things that we are experimenting, we're looking at when it comes to our generators that we're gonna need to use for the decortication and all these things. We we want to look at the idea of like, well, how can we use hemp to fuel these machines and create a fully circular system that hemp is grown, hemp fuels, hemp is processed, everything is essentially utilizing hemp as the driver for these innovations and for the end result of these products. So we're very excited because you know, it allows us to do a lot of RD and experimenting and figuring out kind of what we can do. But, you know, it it is a lot of little things that take a lot of focus and it takes a lot of um, it takes the right amount of vision, I think, and practicality. And so we're really just trying to first principle our way through it and and figure out what we need to do in order to have have this kind of full system that people can use as a as a prototype.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Before we get deeper into your company, because I want to do that, how does hemp help clean the water, clean the air? Because you mentioned that that it can help clean the water, it pulls chemicals out of the ground. Is that pesticides? Is that PFAS? Is that what does it do and how does it clean and what's the end result? So if you plant a crop of hemp, how long does it take to reverse some of that damage?

Carbon, Soil Health, And Water Impacts

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Surprisingly, quite quick. It really does a great job. You know, I don't know the viewers and and uh people at home uh have a lot of knowledge about the soil crisis that we have on the top soil of Earth, but we have a serious problem um with the topsoil with farmers because of the way in which we farm and also the quality of the soil that we're using. And, you know, we've had the administration now work on a regenerative farming initiative that that's gonna help farmers to be able to improve their soil quality. Because the thought is with bad soil, you're growing food that you would then eat. And the concern is that that's gonna be bad for you. Hempta is is potentially a great option for that, which is a cover crop, which essentially does a great job at pulling a lot of these toxins and these harsh metals out of the ground. And, you know, this happens within one cycle of growing hemp. Now, you know, it's a very uh technical thing, which uh I probably would butcher if I tried to get into the chemical side of all that. But I can simply say that the environmental uh uh benefits and effects, you know, when it comes to the soil, it pulls them out. When it comes to the water system, so a lot of way that for packaging at least for paper, you know, a lot of the systems that we use to make paper is very chemical heavy. And with hemp, you it doesn't require those types of chemicals. So when you think of the water systems getting polluted, a lot of the time when it comes to the way that paper is manufactured now, some of these harsh chemicals end up into the you know, the streams and into the into the sewage from these mills and the way that they do it. So with at least with our system, we use zero chemicals. And even if you want to whiten the paper, you can use hydrogen peroxide, which is also another safe material. On that side, you know, obviously that's one one area there. When we're talking about sequestration, at the end of the day, what ends up happening is you've got the carbon in the atmosphere, and the things like plants and vegetations, they pull that out, they store it inside as kind of like a little filter system. Then the idea is you want a long carbon cycle. So essentially, the good thing about trees is trees live decades. And so the thought there is that that's a great place for us to store it. Now, if we go around chopping all the trees down, all of a sudden all that carbon that's stored and we start processing it, it ends up coming back out of these trees and of the vegetation. But the cool thing about hemp is that it sequesters more carbon from the atmosphere than trees do, and it has a longer carbon life cycle. So, you know, you think of recycling paper, and I think we've all got some cardboard boxes that uh don't exactly have the best scent to them. And I think a lot of the time it's it's this overprocessed paper that people end up using. And the cool thing is that hemp paper specifically can be recycled more. I think it's like two or three times more than traditional tree paper. So you have a longer carbon life cycle. And so obviously, if you grow more hemp and you stop cutting down more trees, that's also a net benefit, right? Because essentially those trees continue to store that. Um, and so that's a really powerful effect. And we're looking at like carbon accreditation for our company to be able to provide these credits, even though it's kind of a wonky system right now. But uh, I think the future is very um driven towards companies having these carbon credits and showing that they're making sustainable attempts uh or creating some sort of a lesser impact on what they're contributing to the to the ecosystem. So it really does have all these amazing benefits in these spaces, in these, you know, because if you're passionate about the trees and the forests, we have a place for you. If you're passionate about the oceans and the in the water systems, there's a place for you. You know, if you're passionate about the soil and improvement in farming, there's a place for you. And I think that's what's great about hemp. And I try to encourage people, especially like young people who are innovative, kind of entrepreneurial spirits. I think a lot of young people, hell, I think a lot of old people want to change the world. They want to contribute. They, you know, they want to have a legacy that actually, as they say, you know, grew a tree whose shade they'll never sit under. I think hemp has that capacity. So it's very exciting.

Circular Systems And Hawaii Pilot

SPEAKER_00 24:27

I think we all want to leave the earth a better place for our kids and for our grandkids. I don't think our generation has done a very good job of that, but we have an opportunity to redeem ourselves. And that's a cool thing. What I'd like to talk about more now is you were talking about Hawaii, where you're you're talking about a circular economy of growing hemp, using hemp, recycling hemp. Explain a little bit more about that and how that would work practically, because uh a lot of what we're doing now is we're making these environmentally friendly products or sustainable products, is what they're called. 95% of them are ending up in the landfill. Obviously, no matter how they're grown, you know, hey, we grow hemp, we make hemp paper bags, which you do, we you make hemp cartons great. If it ends up in the landfill, what have we really done? We probably have done some good because of growing hemp and the benefits of growing hemp, but ultimately there has to be an end game that makes sense. So is that what you're talking about in doing in Hawaii and practically how does that work ultimately for the United States? Because and really globally, because that's our issue. You know, we can pass these laws, we can ban foam and ban plastics and do all that. But if there's not a good place for the product to end up, if there's not a good system that we have or infrastructure that we have to take care of it on the other side, then really what what have we done? We've done maybe a little bit of good, but we really haven't solved the problem.

The Hemp Paper Company’s Launch

SPEAKER_01 26:01

I think most solutions these days are less bad. I think that's really the best we can do or that we have done is just how can we do a little less bad? And I don't really think that's a solution. And I think that it really comes down to like how we frame things as well, because when a lot of people are anti, I think that that encourages more of that, um, unfortunately. And I think ticky-tacky as the words that we use uh are, I think that it really does have an effect on what we're doing. An odd thing happened with Hawaii, which maybe I'll get in a little bit of trouble for saying, but they ended up banning single-use plastic. Sounds great. Yeah, let's get rid of single-use plastic. That's smart. Well, the other side of that is do you have industrial compost? Because if you want to switch to sustainability and you want to use these eco-products, these um bioplastics, you need to have industrial compost. Unfortunately, Hawaii doesn't have industrial compost. And it was one of the things that we were, you know, this was maybe six years ago, five years ago. I was in Hawaii and we were working on providing products to a couple restaurants and and coffee shops and whatnot. And we wanted to get our plastic products certified to make sure that they met the requirements in Hawaii. So I reached out to the environmental agency there and have a long conversation with them saying, like, hey, look, um, I'm a little confused because what I know about bioplastics is you got to have industrial compost. This guy goes on, gives me a three or four minute speech about he's had he's tried to reach out to every senators, the governor, and explain that we have to have industrial compost only to fully realize the cost associated. It's very expensive to create an industrial compost facility. And they just didn't think that it, whether they didn't have the money or they just didn't have the interest. I'm not entirely sure. But to this day, they still don't have industrial compost in Hawaii. And so a lot of the time, I think that's what ends up happening is you have um what sounds like a good idea, sounds great, but then you think of the functional side of it, how do we do it? What does it actually benefit? I think that's the problem that we keep running into. So what I my thought is for Hawaii, beyond the fact that it's beautiful and that the people are amazing, and you know, just in general, they their ethos of sustainability in general, of cleaning the oceans and um having that mindset. I think that it also has the great climate for growing hemp. And that's one of the things we want to be able to get more yields per year, right? So if you think of if you're in Minnesota, you could maybe get one cycle of hemp per year. But if you're in Hawaii, you know, we can push three to four. And so you can just do more, essentially. Um, not to mention that there's already the culture built into this sustainability. I think in the Midwest or in the mainland in general, it's a it's a tougher sale because for a lot of people, you know, maybe the climate isn't something they're interested in discussing or that they believe in. You know, I think there's a there's a lot of tension in that in that space. But I think fundamentally with Hawaii, you know, we're looking at what's the finished product here. So our paper specifically, it's backyard compostable. So you can dig a hole and throw the bag in the ground and it will compost in the soil. We haven't tested yet, but we're quite confident that it's ocean safe because it's literally just made from vegetation. So it's just made from hemp. The sea turtles, there's a lot a lot of uh concern about the sea turtles, uh, which I love them. You know, I go out surfing often and and they're out there and they always pop up next to me, and it's a really cool experience. Um, but I think it's something where the sea turtles eat our paper, might even help with some inflammation. Uh, who knows? But uh in general, I think we really want to um just want to encourage a a system that actually makes sense. And if it does end up in the landfill, I think we know that based on what we figured out, that that it's not going to, it has the ability to be able to be harmless. Eventually, we obviously want to get that into a streamlined system where we are recycling that hemp paper, bringing it back into the system and continuing to use it in this type of way. So, luckily, right now in Hawaii, we're working with um Senator Mike Gabbard. So we're introducing a couple bills. He's a huge hemp advocate. I suggest anybody go on YouTube and look him up. And he's got a couple songs of his ukulele about hemp, which is super cool. And he's a really great guy. People might know his daughter as well, Tulsi Gabbard. She's also a big hemp advocate and hemp supporter. So I think you know, Hawaii has a very unique opportunity to be kind of the prototype and the ambassador of hemp. And I think that it's it's a great place to invite policymakers out to to showcase the wonders of hemp in paradise. Thinking of it full picture, we really want to create that type of incentive to get people interested.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

So let's talk about the hemp paper company. So you started the hemp paper company in what year? What do you actually make? I know you mentioned paper bags and boards, but what do you make? Who do you sell to? Tell us a little bit about your paper bags in particular. Just tell us a little bit more about your company.

Products, Strength, And Cost At Scale

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Yeah, so I mean, this idea came out probably four years ago, the inception of it. I was really curious. I think that's always been part of my nature is just to be curious and want to know how things work and why they are the way they are and why is this the way we do things. And so, you know, that drove me to the space where I had somebody, you know, just I was gifted from the universe or God or whoever you want to call it. I think that it was just this invitation to say, hey, look into this. I look into it, and you know, I think with a healthy amount of delusion, I thought, hmm, maybe I'm the guy, you know? And so then it was just figuring out what does it take to do it. At first I thought I was gonna have to build a$25 million paper mill. And that was kind of a very stressful and overwhelming feeling of like, well, who's gonna give me$25 million to start a mill that I've never even made paper in before? So eventually it just turned into a collaborative thing. You know, I continue to talk to people, they continue to provide counsel on what I should do, who I should reach out to. And we eventually, you know, made contact with a few paper mills, but one of them specifically had randomly at the same time started experimenting with hemp. And they had gone through the process and they had figured out essentially how to do it. It was right place, right time. You know, they've got a hundred years of specialty paper making experience. I came to them at the right time and I said, hey, let me let me do what I can to take over on the marketing, the selling, and the um kind of awareness of this material and what we can do with it. We started with bags because we have this kind of the lowest hanging fruit, and it was something to get in people's hands right away. It was something that that works kind of like a little mobile billboard. If you think about, you know, being able to get exposure and people be curious. Yeah. And then we just turned that into a whole business model. Um we continue to experiment and tinker, and we created a hemp board, which we're very excited about, but we don't exactly know what to do with yet. And I think one of the things we want to kind of frame is how we can turn it into really cool things because the paper bag is quite boring when you think of funny enough, I went back home uh after we got our first batch of these bags out. And I went back home to my family and and uh they don't know anything about hemp. They don't really know exactly the benefits or what I'm doing. Uh, they think I'm maybe just kind of like a mad scientist out here just trying to figure it out. So I come home, Christmas time, I hand out these bags to everybody. I'm super excited, and they're just like, oh, Ben, cool, you made a bag. I'm like, no, no, no, you don't understand. This is this is this is revolutionary. This is gonna be in a museum someday. And they're like, yeah, this looks like a good one. And they didn't quite understand how to wrap their head around the gravity of like this being the first one that's ever been created, you know, and where this is gonna usher a new industry and all these things. But it's it's that type of exchange that really helped to bring some clarity on like people just don't get it. It's important to be able to do it in a functional way that you kind of want it ubiquitous. I don't really necessarily don't necessarily need it to be so powerful in regards to it, the branding of the hemp paper bags. It's really more, I think we're gonna have to do that on the cool product side. So, our hemp board, we're looking at surfboards, skateboards, all of these different applications that we can make it a little sexier and cooler, and then being able to continue to do functional things. So one of the areas is is obviously carton packaging, some call monocarton packaging. You know, we think of that from your Wheaties box to um, you mean your jewelry box or your lipstick carton, all those type of things. So we're in the final stages right now of our conversion and figuring out exactly what we're gonna come with first and what we think is the best carton to basically market around. We're working with uh like a high-end luxury brand right now, which can't necessarily say who that is, but they're very interested because they a lot of these luxury brands have um very uh aggressive sustainability efforts, and we can essentially provide the solution to some of those. Because when you think of it, well, my my argument was or my my coined tagline was nature is the ultimate luxury. And I think that resonated with them, and I think that's something they could, you know, kind of run with and brand around. Um, and we just wouldn't, we really are in a position now to where we want to continue to get bags out. You know, we're at our first approach was dispensaries. So we started to reach out to dispensaries because we figured they would understand better. Turned out most dispensaries don't have a lot of money to pay the premium of our bags. So we just had to come up with innovative ways to drive the cost down by inviting uh advertising space in the bag and things like that. Hawaii, we're at three different hotels, I think it's IHG brand hotels. So we've got a lot there. We've got uh, you know, three or four coffee shops in the States. We have a couple like restaurant groups that bought bags and they're just trying to promote, you know, the sustainability stuff. And they're just big fans of me, I think. Uh they're friends of friends. Yeah, so we're just aggressive. We're trying to get out there, we're trying to scale things and continue to, you know, essentially what the hemp industry needs is they need proof of concept of, you know, where are this, where are the commercial successes of the actual application of this material. And so that's what I've I've kind of championed myself to do is is provide that example that people can point to and be like, well, look, hemp paper company is able to do it. They're at, you know, Erwan and Whole Foods and so on and so forth. So I think that's kind of one of the areas that we're really we're aimed to focus in in target in the future.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

So right now, uh when you talk about bags, sizes two to ten, correct? Yep, size two to ten, yep. Compared to a regular paper bag, a hemp bag is what?

Future Uses And Closing Reflections

SPEAKER_01 37:23

It's about 2.3 times stronger than a traditional bag. And when it comes to cost, it's about two and a half times more expensive, which is usually people's like, wait, I'm gonna pay more money for something that uh they're just gonna throw away. And I think that what people need to understand is that it's an industry of scale. And so at scale with tree paper, it becomes 30% cheaper, but we're not there yet. And so I think that's why we're really trying to partner with brands who have, you know, really some vision and some sustainability, I guess you could say, desire to actually make a difference and recognizing yes, it's a little more expensive right now, but we're also coming up with ways to drive that cost down through innovative advertising. I encourage anybody to reach out to us, uh, of course, and we can send out samples so people can test it for themselves. I mean, we've got, you know, I think we're number six bags we tested a couple months ago, and it was 30 pounds we were able to put into the bag and no sign of rippage. Um, we we would have fit a bigger uh dumbbell in there, but it just doesn't fit. So I think we're continuing to showcase that um that it has a lot of strength because everybody's felt that experience of a paper bag ripping on them and the stuff goes everywhere. And with ours, it just doesn't happen. Um, so you don't need to double bag uh with our paper because it's definitely going to be able to handle it. Now, the next phase we need to get is into the handles because we've had a lot of interest and demand uh looking for paper bags that are handles, and it's in the process, we're working on it. You know, we're hoping by the end of quarter two that we'll be able to start providing those.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

In your case, once you get the scale, 30% less than traditional paper bags and stronger. And I could tell you that I you did send me samples and I did test them, and man, they are very, very strong. So when when you think about a six-pound bag, right? Historically, they use that to measure sugar. So a six-pound bag held six pounds of sugar. Well, you're putting 30 pounds in there, and you know, it held up. So it's it's extraordinary. So the strength is amazing, and I I can attest to that because I did actually try them and and really play with them. So can you make toilet paper with hemp? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

You can make every type of paper with hemp. The only thing about that is that's not my area of expertise, but I do know that hemp being stronger, I don't know about it in regards to its softness. So I think there's there would have to be some sort of engineering around that. Um, but if you if you're looking for a strong toilet paper, I think hemp is the way to go. I don't know yet. I mean, I'm sure there's a way to do that to be able to soften it. But yeah, I think it's it paper towels as well is another area that I'm very passionate about because my guilty pleasure is using paper towels for everything. And it is a guilt. Uh and I do feel, you know, my my partner, she's continuously reminding me to stop wasting all the paper towels. But it's just so easy to clean up and do things with, and I can trust that it's clean. But anyway, so I think that's something we we definitely want to get into uh in the near future. But uh, but you know, we gotta focus one thing at a time.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

So uh I will have the link to your website on the podcast episode so people can, if they want to get in contact with you, they can uh inquire on the website. Goodness, it it sounds amazing. I think the future is really bright. I'm glad to be able to help you to get the word out because uh ultimately we know in our industry uh what we see with legislation and everything that's going on. There's a ton of legislation right now. Some of it we feel like is good, some of it maybe not so good, but ultimately the goal being how do we get more sustainable? How do we get an economy that is circular so that this product that is grown is sustainable, used, and then recycled back and used again. When I was a kid, we used to go to the beer distributor and get soda. When you went to the beer, and I don't know if you're if you're old enough to remember this, but you went to the beer distributor and got soda, and it was in these heavy-duty glass bottles, and it was in a wooden case. And so you got the soda, you brought it home, you drank the soda, and you took the empty bottles and the case back to the beer distributor, and it was recycled. So the case was used again, the bottles were washed and reused again. Incredible. It was just an incredible circular system. And so we had that at one time, and then we lost it once plastics came in, and you know, then we were all called litter bugs and all that stuff, the landfills and everything. And now we have the opportunity to fix it. And uh, I really love you, Ben, for for stepping out and being the one to, or one of the the ones to uh pioneer hemp as as the product that you feel and it seems like it's the product of the future. It was amazing to have you on the podcast episode. And I encourage people, if you're interested in learning more, do some research. Go on and look at videos and do research. If you're interested in any products, contact Ben's company, paper bags and board and some of the other things that you're working on. And uh, we're just thrilled to have you on.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Yeah, and and it was a pleasure to obviously sit down with you and and go through this and hopefully it shines a little bit more light on this material, not just from the paper side, but also just kind of like an application for all these different things and being able to say, you know, hemp is the fiber of the future. I'm passionate about it, and um I think it's something to build a legacy around. Yeah, I'm just very, you know, excited to continue to push this, even though it is stressful and it, you know, there's a lot of hurdles uh to overcome. But I think it's totally worth it and it's very purpose-driven. And I think that's why a lot of people are interested in in helping me and being, you know, kind of ambassadors or or people like you, Mike, who are, you know, very supportive in getting the story out there. I think it's it's a huge um benefit to what we're working on. And I think that um, yeah, I think we're excited about the future. And I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me.

SPEAKER_00 43:37

Yeah, it's my pleasure. And the exciting thing for me is to think about a future where we can fix this. You know, that all the damage that's been done to our planet and everything, we have an opportunity to make it better. And that's exciting to me. And so uh congratulations and thanks for coming uh on to the podcast. And that's all we have today. Who says selling toilet paper isn't glamorous? Thanks a lot and have a great day.