Logan Village man Shawn Moir wants to revolutionise the construction industry by changing how we build homes in Australia.
Much of Mr Moir’s planned revolution is tied to hemp, which he is using to build sustainable and eco-friendly homes.
A certified carpenter, Mr Moir founded a construction company that specialises in sustainable building solutions and hemp houses after witnessing the rate at which houses were built in the mainstream construction industry.
“We are deforesting Australia to build homes at a quick rate, but we can’t do it this way,” Mr Moir said.
“We need to change our trajectory in the way that we’re manufacturing without damaging our environment at the same time.”
In the next five years, the Green Building Council estimates Australia will waste up to $64 billion of construction materials. Using hemp to build houses instead can help to reduce the waste the construction industry produces.
“It’s about eradicating and stopping that, because really, all of that is just detrimental to our environment,” Mr Moir said.
Hemp is both fire and mould resistant, and can be used to fertilise soil to make way for other materials or produce to be grown on the same soil.
It’s a better deal for farmers as well, who will be able to profit from harvesting hemp, Mr Moir said.
When hemp is compressed into brick-like forms, for example, it acts as a way to store carbon, Mr Moir said.
“If we grow hemp and then turn it to stone, it locks the carbon away forever; it could start fixing our oxygen, ozone, and carbon problems.”
Mr Moir would like to incorporate plastic into his builds as well, to repurpose and reduce global plastic pollution levels.
“I want to make plastic a commodity and take it out of the ocean and have people mine plastic for housing,” he said.
“The same way that we would deforest a forest, I want the world to scavenge for plastic, and then melt it down to make different grades. spans and densities.”
Using these hemp and other sustainable building materials, Mr Moir has built a house, an orchard, an organic farm, a river, and an industrial barn, which he will rent out for events and accommodation when the project is complete in 6 months’ time.
“In my years and years of being a carpenter and builder, I hated how fast we were building houses; I hated seeing Australian forests diminish over the years I was working as a carpenter.”
