Every Material Has an Afterlife
Why microplastics changed the way I think about hemp rope, movement tools, and material honesty
My interest in hemp rope did not begin with hemp rope.
It began with microplastics.
Years ago, I encountered microplastics research happening on a lake in Italy. I got to tour the lake, hear about the work, and see firsthand how researchers were thinking about tiny fragments of modern materials moving through a living water system. That experience stayed with me. It made the problem feel less abstract. Microplastics were not just an ocean issue, or a faraway pollution issue, or something that happened somewhere downstream. They were a material-afterlife issue.
When I came back to northwest Arkansas, I started wondering: what about Beaver Lake?
Beaver Lake is not just scenery. It is drinking water, habitat, recreation, stormwater receiver, regional infrastructure, and a living watershed. After some digging, I could not find evidence that anyone had really looked closely at microplastics there. That absence bothered me. So I pitched the importance of the question to my employer at the time. He funded the project and allowed me to help shape the setup. That research is still ongoing today, even though I have since left.
That experience changed the way I think about products.
It taught me this:
A product is never finished when the user is done with it. It keeps making-with the world.
That is the principle behind what I now call material honesty.
Materials do not disappear
Most products are designed around the moment of use. Does it work? Does it feel good? Does it look good? Can it be sold? Can it be shipped? Can it be branded?
Those questions matter, but they stop too early.
The deeper ecological question is: what does this material become after use?
Does it shed? Does it abrade? Does it fragment? Does it leach? Does it become dust, fiber, residue, runoff, sediment, smoke, compost, soil, or landfill? Does it enter a lake? Does it enter a body? Does it persist for decades? Does it feed decomposers? Does it carry hidden coatings or chemical finishes into places the user never intended?
That is material afterlife.
NOAA defines microplastics as plastic pieces less than five millimeters long, and notes that they can come from larger plastic debris breaking apart as well as other sources (1). UNEP describes microplastics as one of the long-lived legacies of plastic pollution and notes that synthetic textiles such as polyester, acrylic, and nylon can shed microfibres through washing and wearing (2). A 2023 Nature study found plastic debris in every one of the 38 lakes and reservoirs it sampled across 23 countries, which reinforces that lakes and reservoirs are part of the plastic-pollution cycle, not outside it (3).
That is the uncomfortable truth microplastics taught me: modern materials keep traveling.
They travel through watersheds. Through stormwater. Through sediments. Through fish. Through dust. Through food webs. Through human bodies. Through time.
So when I started thinking more seriously about EcoLSD materials, especially flow ropes and maces, I could not treat rope as “just rope” anymore.
A rope is a tool, yes.
But it is also a future residue.
This is why material choice matters
Synthetic rope may be strong, cheap, consistent, and convenient. It may also be a future microfiber pathway. As it wears, abrades, frays, gets washed, gets dragged across ground, gets left in heat and sunlight, or eventually gets discarded, it remains part of the plastic material cycle.
That does not mean every synthetic rope is evil. It means the material has a particular afterlife.
Natural fiber is not automatically innocent either. Cotton can be grown poorly. Hemp can be monocropped. Natural fibers can be dyed, bleached, softened, coated, preserved, or chemically processed in ways that make the word “natural” misleading. A biodegradable material can still be part of an extractive system.
That is why I do not use hemp because “hemp is automatically sustainable.”
I use hemp because the right hemp, grown and processed with care, belongs to a different material logic.
It is plant fiber, not plastic fiber. It can wear, soften, fray, and eventually decompose through a biological pathway rather than persist as synthetic fragments. It can be grown in rotation. It can be retted through field ecology. It can be mechanically processed. It can carry the scent, color, texture, and memory of the plant world it came from.
But only if the relationships are honest.
Hemp is not the answer. The system is the answer.
One of the easiest forms of greenwashing is to treat a material name as proof.
“Hemp.”
“Natural.”
“Eco-friendly.”
“Biodegradable.”
Those words can mean something, but they can also hide a lot. Hemp can be grown in a simplified annual system. It can be processed with chemicals. It can be shipped through opaque supply chains. It can be turned into disposable products. It can be marketed as regenerative without proving that soil, water, biodiversity, farmer resilience, or community relationships are actually improving.
So the real question is not simply, “Is this made from hemp?”
The better question is:
What is this hemp making-with?
That is where sympoiesis becomes useful. Donna Haraway uses the term sympoiesis to mean making-with rather than self-making: living systems are not isolated, self-contained units; they are made through relationships (4).
A hemp rope is not self-made. It is made-with seed, soil, rainfall, farmer timing, crop rotation, hemp stalks, dew, fungi, bacteria, retting weather, decortication, spinning, twist, storage, scent, hands, movement practice, repair, wear, and decomposition.
The rope is not just a product.
It is a temporary alliance.
What I currently know about the rope I use
The hemp rope I use for EcoLSD flow ropes and maces is sourced through Rawganique. Based on Rawganique’s public product information, their hemp rope is described as organic European long-strand hemp, untreated, chemical-free, skin-friendly, unbleached/dye-free on relevant rope pages, made at their European atelier, PFAS-free, and biodegradable (5). Rawganique also publicly describes using dew retting for hemp and linen instead of chemical or acid washing to speed fiber processing (6).
Through direct supplier communication, I have also confirmed that the hemp is organically grown on small farms in Romania, that crop rotation is used to maintain soil health and fertility, that the hemp is dew-retted, that mechanical decortication is used, and that no chemicals are used in processing. More farm-level details are still pending.
That places the rope, in my current assessment, around:
Level 3.75 out of 5: high-integrity sustainable hemp with regenerative-compatible farm logic.
That wording matters.
I am not calling it verified regenerative yet. To do that responsibly, I would need deeper farm-level evidence: actual crop rotation sequence, whether legumes or cover crops are used, fertility sources, habitat context, water practices, soil-health outcomes, byproduct cycling, testing, organic certification scope, and full chain-of-custody detail.
But the confirmed story is already meaningful:
Organic Romanian small-farm hemp, crop-rotated for soil health and fertility, dew-retted, mechanically decorticated, and processed without chemicals.
That is very different from vague “eco-friendly hemp.”
The rope still smells like a plant
One of the things I love about the Rawganique rope is that it still smells like hemp.
That may sound minor, but it is not meaningless. Scent is not proof of sustainability, organic status, or regeneration. But it is a sensory clue. It can tell you that a material still carries some of its plant-retting identity.
I have compared a few hemp rope samples. One Romanian sample from another supplier was virtually odorless, with less color depth, lower fiber quality, and a lower-care-taken twist. It did not feel terrible, but it did not feel like the Rawganique rope. Another Chinese hemp rope sample was gray, very soft, odorless, and almost lifeless in the hand. I do not know its full processing history, so I will not claim it was chemically treated. But as a maker, I pay attention when a natural fiber feels overly standardized or severed from its plant identity.
That observation led me to ask better questions:
Was it heavily washed? Degummed? Softened? Deodorized? Over-processed? Made from shorter fiber? Twisted with less care? Stored differently? Finished in a way that changes its afterlife?
The point is not that scent proves virtue.
The point is that materials speak through more than labels.
Color, scent, hand-feel, twist, fiber integrity, dust, residue, fray behavior, and aging all matter. They are not lab tests, but they are part of material intimacy. They help a maker notice whether a material feels plant-present or product-standardized.
Material honesty versus sustainabullshit
This is where I draw a line between sustainability and what I jokingly call sustainabullshit.
Sustainabullshit is ecological language used to hide extractive relationships.
It is “eco-friendly” with no evidence. “Natural” with hidden processing. “Biodegradable” with synthetic coatings. “Regenerative” with no soil, water, biodiversity, or farmer-level proof. “Carbon neutral” while the underlying material system remains extractive.
The FTC warns marketers against broad, unqualified claims like “green” or “eco-friendly” because those claims are difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate without clear qualification (7).
That is the discipline I want EcoLSD to follow.
The opposite of greenwashing is not perfection.
The opposite of greenwashing is transparency about relationships, limits, evidence, and uncertainty.
So I want to be precise.
I can say the rope I use is organic hemp rope from Rawganique. I can say supplier communication confirms Romanian small-farm origin, crop rotation for soil health and fertility, dew retting, mechanical decortication, and no chemical processing. I can say it is a high-integrity, regenerative-compatible hemp material.
I cannot yet say it is verified regenerative.
That distinction is not weakness. It is trust.
What this means for EcoLSD tools
A flow rope or mace is not just a piece of gear.
It is something you hold. Swing. Sweat on. Practice with. Break in. Repair. Smell. Wear down. Carry outside. Leave in your home. Maybe hand to someone else. Maybe retire someday.
That intimacy matters.
The material enters your body-world. It becomes part of rhythm, breath, grip, strength, coordination, play, and attention. If that material is synthetic, it brings one kind of afterlife. If it is untreated hemp, it brings another. If it is hemp grown and processed through a transparent, crop-rotated, chemically untreated system, it brings another still.
I am not trying to make perfect products.
I am trying to make honest ones.
That means asking better questions before the product exists, while it is being used, and after it leaves the user’s hands.
What was this material made from?
What was it made-with?
What relationships did it support?
What did it hide?
What will it become?
Where will it go?
What worlds will it keep making?
The guiding question
The microplastics work changed me because it made material afterlife visible.
A plastic fragment in a lake is not just pollution. It is a message from a product that did not really end.
That message now shapes how I source rope, how I think about hemp, how I talk about sustainability, and how I build EcoLSD tools.
The guiding question is simple:
What worlds does this material keep making after it leaves my hands?
That question is the beginning of material honesty.
Notes and sources
1 NOAA Ocean Service. “What are microplastics?” Updated June 16, 2024. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html
2 UNEP. “Microplastics: The long legacy left behind by plastic pollution.” April 28, 2023. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/microplastics-long-legacy-left-behind-plastic-pollution
3 Nava, V. et al. “Plastic debris in lakes and reservoirs.” Nature 619, 317-322. 2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06168-4
4 Haraway, D. J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. 2016. https://www.dukeupress.edu/staying-with-the-trouble
5 Rawganique. “16mm Organic Hemp Rope (6kg Roll) (100% Biodegradable).” Accessed May 10, 2026. https://rawganique.com/products/16mm-hemp-rope-6kg-roll
6 Rawganique. “Caring for Organic Cotton, Linen, Hemp Products.” Accessed May 10, 2026. https://rawganique.com/pages/caring-for-organic-cotton-linen-hemp-products
7 Federal Trade Commission. “Environmental Claims: Summary of the Green Guides.” https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/environmental-claims-summary-green-guides
Source note: Rawganique farm-origin, rotation, dew-retting, mechanical decortication, and no-chemical-processing details beyond the public product pages come from direct supplier communication with EcoLSD in May 2026. Farm-level details are still being requested.