EarthX, taking place April 19-23 in Dallas, Texas, is the world’s largest green gathering and Earth Day event. It features a Congress of Conferences that highlights a wide range of environmental and sustainability-related topics and brings together environmental organizations, businesses, academic institutions, governmental agencies, speakers and subject matter experts. The multi-day celebration also features live music, art, food and a huge exposition of green related businesses.
This year’s event will feature an EarthX Hemp General Store, powered by NoCo Hemp Expo. The store will showcase a variety of hemp products for display and sale, including T-shirts, hats, guitars, hemp-printed pocket constitutions for politicians and attendees of all political stripes, and other assorted hemp merchandise and CBD products. The purpose is to inform and educate, as well as to make hemp products available to the general public.
Morris Beegle, producer of NoCo Hemp Expo, has been involved in advocating hemp education to the huge Earth Day celebration since 2018, when he was invited by fellow hemp advocate Mark Linday of Greenspring Technologies to participate in a small hemp pavilion. NoCo sponsored the pavilion the following year as the footprint grew, a hemp stage was added, and hemp became a permanent part of EarthX. The show was canceled in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and returned online in 2021.
At this year’s EarthX — the largest yet — hemp will have an even bigger presence. The EarthX Hemp General Store will be part of a Rocky Mountain pavilion that includes a hemp education stage for programming about the plant, as well as an assortment of hemp companies that will demonstrate how hempcrete, hemp plastic and other industrial hemp products are made. It will also provide information about hemp foods, hemp fiber applications, and cannabinoids such as CBD and CBG. Exhibitors will include Tree Free Hemp Paper, Global Fiber Processing, PureHemp Technology, Silver Mountain Hemp Guitars, One Planet Hemp Apparel, the Texas Hemp Coalition and Dama Bioplastics, among others.
Beegle, who will appear in a “Mainstreaming Hemp Products” panel discussion, is enthusiastic about attending this year. “We are looking forward to being back at Fair Park for the EarthX show,” he said. “It’s exciting to educate and introduce hemp products to such a large public audience. What better way to celebrate Earth Day than by bringing hemp to more and more people.”
Dallas business owner and philanthropist Trammell Crow founded EarthX as Earth Day Dallas in 2011 to revitalize enthusiasm around Earth Day, meant to bring attention to environmental and sustainability causes around the world. Over the years, the annual event has drawn more than 750,000 visitors. Crow spoke at the NoCo9 Hemp Expo in March and urged crowd members to attend EarthX if they were “serious about the climate conversation and serious about the environment.”