Hempitecture to Establish First Hemp Insulation Designated Facility in the U.S.

Hempitecture, a Ketchum, Idaho-based company, will soon be manufacturing a non-toxic, no-VOC and more sustainable thermal insulation product for residential and commercial buildings. Once complete, Hempitecture’s 33,000 sq. ft. nonwovens plant will be the first hemp insulation designated facility in the U.S.

The idea for Hempitecture came to Mattie Mead, CEO and founder, when he was an undergraduate in architecture and environmental sciences at Hobart and William Smith Colleges nearly a decade ago.

As a student, Mead became interested in a few challenges that he learned about in the built environment—one of which is that buildings and their operations are responsible for about 40% of our energy consumption and carbon footprint. Therefore, he began looking at ways that plant-based or rapidly renewable resources can be utilized to create more sustainable, environmentally-friendly buildings.

“The business as it was pitched in college is very different than it is today, and I didn’t even know or understand the term nonwovens when I was a student studying archi