by Colton Griffin
Last month I was in San Francisco for the National Cannabis Industry Association meeting, where I dropped in on a symposium about environmental sustainability in our industry.
I ended up in a fascinating discussion among people representing different parts of the cannabis supply chain: a cultivator, a packager, a distributor, an attorney—and me, a cannabis software executive. We talked about why the industry needs to stay green, all puns intended, and where opportunities exist to improve our industry’s environmental record.
On the cultivation side, outdoor growers need to mitigate runoff and limit water usage, while indoor growers can reduce their carbon footprint by installing LED lights and reducing power usage. Unlike traditional agriculture, strict government regulations on product testing rule out using pesticides, fertilizers, and many nutrients, meaning that the cannabis products we all enjoy today are probably the least toxic agriculture products we can buy.
Similarly, when cannabis is processed and manufactured, there isn’t the type or volume of waste we see in other industries. Distribution also is already rather low-impact, as 18-wheel semitrailer trucks aren’t required yet to move our inventory. Other than recycling, composting, and monitoring energy usage, cannabis retail stores and offices don’t have a lot of room to improve their environmental impact any differently than other industries
But one area of the business stands out as ripe for environmental improvement: plastic. Specifically, I see it in packaging and compliance-driven regulatory requirements. State laws require products be sold with extensive childproofing and tamper-resistant protection, such as inner and outer packaging. The problem with these measures, which go far beyond the ways similarly controlled alcoholic or tobacco products are packaged, is that they significantly increase the amount of waste in the cannabis supply chain.
To be clear, I am not disparaging the packaging companies, who are merely fulfilling a market need of cannabis providers. And some people in that industry are pressing for more environmentally sustainable practices in cannabis.
Ross Kirsh, the chief executive officer of Dymapak—a seller of child-resistant packaging materials for cannabis products—wrote in Packaging Digest last year that the regulations themselves are to blame. He acknowledges that the need to prevent contamination and to track “seed-to-sale” traceability and compliance necessitate greater packaging volume. That leads to low-cost solutions, Kirsh writes, “and in almost all instances, the solution is a non-recyclable product from a non-sustainable company.”
“Regulatory red tape and dubious low-cost solutions create a hazardous cycle. Executives, company founders, and, yes, even consumers, must do better,” Kirsh adds. “We need to fight for cleaner regulatory practices that can lead to greater sustainability across all the many businesses working side-by-side with cannabis, including agriculture, manufacturing, and my industry, packaging.”
Kirsh notes that in Quebec, cannabis regulators require that containers use post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastics. “Each of the individual U.S. state regulatory bodies should adopt similar provisions for their own regulations,” he adds.
Some cannabis players are designing their packaging with the environment in mind. For example, Fumé boasts a pre-rolled joint that is in “child-resistant certified, totally sustainable, and 100% recyclable packaging [that] took over a year to develop.”
Of course, advances in hemp as a plastic replacement suggest cannabis companies won’t have to look far for another sustainable packaging source.
Other companies are working with recyclable materials, the article notes, while observers hope that hemp could eventually replace many of the plastic needs in the industry.
The other source of plastic plaguing our industry are Metrc tags. Metric, launched as the Marijuana Enforcement Tracking Reporting & Compliance software for the State of Colorado in 2013, is backed by hedge fund Tiger Global Management and Casa Verde Capital and operates in 16 states. The company is known for its plastic “RFID” enabled tags that license holders generally are required to pay $0.25 to $0.45 a piece for and tag every single cannabis plant and container of cannabis product. Across the country license holders will gladly point to the immense amount of waste this creates. The RFID component to these tags is never used and exacerbates the problem. States could easily change this, and I’m shocked that in environmentally leading states haven’t yet addressed it. Even without relaxing the strict tagging requirements, many lower impact options exist to accomplish the policy goals of track and trace.
Some states are still helping, even if their methods don’t address packaging or plastic tags. Massachusetts’ rules require cannabis companies to chart their water and energy usage, which offers opportunities for improvement—a step in the right direction for creating a more sustainable environment. Other states should consider adopting similar measures.
Similarly, the Resource Innovation Institute, a nonprofit that researches efficiencies in agriculture, has created the
“PowerScore” benchmarking platform that provides facility-level performance assessments based on industry-standard key performance indicators on energy, emissions, water, and waste. The organization reports that it has ranked more than 350 producers, from greenhouses to vertical farms.
Much work remains, but this industry is primed to lead on sustainability. I’m looking forward to helping drive this conversation and to supporting like-minded operators as we create the cannabis industry of the future and unlock the power of this amazing plant.
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