Guests in The Sustainable Hour on 28 March 2018 are Bernadette Uzelac, Chief Executive Officer, Geelong Chamber of Commerce, and Charles Kovess, Marketing Director, Textile and Composite Industries.

They describe their vision of how Geelong could reinvent itself as a plastic-free fiber-textile region and reestablish the former wool industry centre as Australia’s textile capital, growing, processing and producing hemp textile for clothes, including army uniforms, and bags. More info below.

Listen to The Sustainable Hour no. 209 on 94.7 The Pulse:

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Industrial hemp’s exciting benefits

Industrial hemp. You can build magnificent homes with it. Noise barriers along high ways can be made out of ‘hempcrete’ instead of concrete. Hemp mulch is an effective weed suppressant. It sequesters carbon – 10-100 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare per year, while the hemp plants’ roots – four tonnes of root-matter per hectar – builds the soil.

The story of hemp’s beneficial potentials doesn’t end there.

There are environmental benefits in using hemp for paper and biomass and it is a good source of protein for animal fodder. Hemp’s growth rate is four times more productive than timber, which makes it an effective carbon sequestration plant. For every ton of above ground biomass, 1.83 tons of CO2 are sequestered in the soil. With carbon emissions rising higher on the political agenda, the carbon sequestration potential for hemp products could be of great benefit.

From law to hemp

Charles Kovess graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Laws with Honours in 1973, and gained his Master of Laws from Monash University in 1980. Today, he is secretary in the Australian Industrial Hemp Alliance and Textile and Composite Industries’ CEO and international marketing director. He is also founder, CEO and chief speaker of Kovess International.

» Charles Kovess’ Linkedin profile: 

www.linkedin.com/in/charleskovess

» Charles Kovess’ home page: 

www.kovess.com

Voice of Geelong business

Bernadette Uzelac was the CEO of People @ Work for 23 years, having established the Geelong recruitment agency in 1987. In 2010 she was appointed executive officer of the Geelong Chamber of Commerce, which has well over 900 members in Geelong, and in 2017, she was appointed chair of the Victorian Small Business Ministerial Council.

Bernadette is well known and connected within the local business community and is a highly regarded business leader holding a number of senior board appointments, including G21, Geelong Business Club and Deakin University Academic Advisory Board for Commerce Programs.