Hemp advocates tend to get a rapturous look when they talk about their favorite plant. And they have some very good reasons for that.

You can make hemp into clothing, paper, wood composites, personal care products, paint, and food, among other things. Hemp yields several times the amount of fiber per acre that trees do, and as an annual crop, is easier to manage. It doesn’t require the huge amounts of pesticides and herbicides that cotton does, and doesn’t come from fossil fuels like synthetic fabrics. Hemp fiber is also particularly strong, meaning that paper can be recycled more times and textiles last longer. And hempseed oil is a great source of healthy essential fatty acids.

But advocates often go a bit overboard when they describe the benefits of hemp. The plant actually has some of the same problems as others grown on a large scale. It requires about as much nitrogen fertilizer as wheat and is comparable to other crops in terms of water use. Also, as an annual crop, hemp doesn’t do much to preserve the soil or provide animal habitat. It requires a lot of energy for harvesting and processing, and like any monoculture crop, it doesn’t help biodiversity.

Using hemp will give you some good eco-karma, just not as much as, say, eating all organic or vegetarian. So get some hemp products, but also check out clothes made from organically produced cotton, and paper and wood from sustainably harvested trees or recycled pulp. And as always, look for ways to consume less, rather than just shifting to new sources.

This article was written by Noah Grant as part of "YES! But how?" To read more, click here.