U.S. hemp plastics innovator Mark Linday passes away

Friends and colleagues started flooding social media late this week upon hearing of the passing of U.S. hemp innovator Mark Linday, founder of Green Spring Technologies, Fort Worth, Texas. 

Linday started Green Spring, a sustainable technologies company focused on renewable resources, in 2014 after becoming interested in the potential for hemp fiber bio-composites. The company develops everyday items from hemp-based plastics. 

Inking of the Farm Bill

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell famously used one of Green Spring’s custom designed ink pens to sign into law the landmark 2018 Farm Bill that made hemp legal at the federal level. 

A U.S. Air Force veteran and a former intelligence analyst, Linday organized Green Spring around a core group of fellow military veterans, whom he strongly supported.

Supported veterans

“We don’t want to leave our veterans behind. We don’t want to leave anyone behind,” Linday told interviewer Michael Lyons at NoCo Hemp Expo in 2016. “Taking care of each other is the ultimate in sustainability,” Linday said.

He was also a staunch defender of cannabis. “We are not potheads. We are not criminals,” he told the Fort Worth Star Telegram in 2016 during a local demonstration in support of the Global Marijuana March. “The marijuana movement isn’t just about smoking pot. It’s about an agricultural crop with a lot of potential that we are forbidden to grow.”


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