Hey Dudes,
I’ve been working in the legal cannabis industry on and off for the past 7 years. I left my last farm job with many frustrations. Turns out the industry is highly wasteful and lacks any kind of environmental stewardship. Waste is the name of the game. Truckloads of ProMix arrive twice a month to be put into disposable grow bags. When the grow cycle ends the pots, leaves and stems are dumped into a rolloff dumpster and hauled away. Miles and miles of trellis are used once and sent to the landfill. Nothing is composted or recycled.
I did some back of the envelope calculations and found that a single greenhouse is drawing about 45,000 KWh at ALL TIMES. Turns out it takes a lot of energy to run lights, fans, dehumidifiers, monitoring equipment, RO systems and pumps. During the winter months propane trucks show up twice a week to keep the greenhouses warm. For some reason the farm I was at was still using metal halides… legalized indoor marijuana-growing operations account for 1% of total electricity use in the US, at a cost of $6bn per year. Annually, such consumption produces 15m tons of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2), equal to that of three million average cars. [1]
Then there is another layer of energy use to make concentrates and edibles. I wasn’t able to find any statistics on this.
And what happens to the excess effluent of salt based fertilizers? Dumped into the local storm drain. As far as I know this was not monitored or cared about.
Meanwhile the packaging of the final product is highly wasteful. A single gram of cannabis comes with an average of 70 grams of packaging waste, primarily in the form of single-use plastics. [2]
How many doob tubes, gram bags, dab containers, edible wraps, mylar, mylar, mylar does it take to fuck up the environment? Apparently we’re gonna find out.
And of course capitalism rears it’s ugly head. Recreational cannabis has been legal in my state for almost 5 years. The small mom and pop farms that I started out on are long gone. The farms and dispensaries that are doing well are vertically integrated. Unless you have a mountain of cash and an army of investors you won’t be entering the arena.
So, yeah, I left the farm/industry and I’m doing my own thing on the free market. I have a small outdoor garden and grow in hugle pots using regenerative practices. My garden is 5 years old and I’m using the same soil I started with. I top dress each fall and a little in the spring and keep a cover crop going at all times. I use very little electricity for brewing compost tea and running fans and dehumidifiers at harvest. The electricity I do use comes from a small solar array and battery bank.
But my regenerative practices aren’t valued on the market. People want the ultra dense frosty buds and incredible terpenes that can only be produced in a high energy environment. I put my heart and soul into my garden, I’m mindful of how much energy and waste my grow uses and produces. Each season I strive to make my grow more regenerative and sustainable. And I’m damn proud of it too! But it isn’t valued or appreciated by the general public.
The market is flooded and dispensary prices have totally tanked in my state, down 50% over the past year. [3]
So what’s a guy like me to do? I love growing this plant but apparently my methods don’t/won’t support a livelihood.
Thanks for reading my rant Dudes.
Bacillus Subtillus
1 https://www.cannabissciencetech.com/view/the-environmental-implications-of-energy-consumption-in-cannabis-cultivation
2 https://www.treehuggercontainers.com/thc-blog/the-plastic-problem-in-the-cannabis-industry
3 https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2022/12/14/michigan-marijuana-prices-all-time-low/
That’s super sad and disappointing to hear. I too try to use as little as possible, waste nothing and I try to get as much of my inputs from locally sourced ingredients. It should be illegal to dump that runoff into the storm drains…amongst all the other stuff. Sucks you’re being weeded out I hope you find your way in that mess. Good luck brotha
I appreciate your work. The thing is, we can only blame ourselves for participating. Take every opportunity people to NOT choose pre roll, waxes and all that mess. Can’t we just get back to the basics? Learn how to roll your own or use a pipe. Kids already ruined sex for themselves with all this porn. Now they are ruining weed for themselves with all this easy vape and candy looking plastic gimmicks. Sorry Buddy, making a actual living off it is prolly pretty close to impossible. Everyone I know that needed to pay bills, had to figure out what else to do. I’m sure you promote just smoking flower as I do. It’s what I can do. So I do.
Sunny while I can see your side…it’s just like the fat cats putting the recycling burden and guilt on the consumer. So now nestle and coke can do what they do making trillions of bottles a year and put the blame on us. The change needs to come from the top. Just bc one person buys a pre roll doesn’t make them the bad guy. They are ignorant and many people can’t grow their own or won’t go buy it illegally so they go to the store. The big companies should have a moral responsibility to the earth…and since that will never happen the govt should put hella regulations on what they can and can’t do that impacts the environment. Dumping high nutritive runoff into the storm drain should be at minimum illegal af and highly regulated and tested.
But it’s the only thing I can do. It is what it is out there and I don’t have the energy to actually do any of the big important stuff. I don’t fight it. But I also don’t promote it. I don’t consume much in life and I try to use stuff till the wheels fall off. I promote this behavior every chance i get. Not for waste and the world as much as for saving money and not filling landfills with crap. I will never be that person spending time at the capital. It’s not me. I’d rather live in my own little world and leave as little mess behind. He who holds the purse strings control the world though….. if there was not tricks with money in their pockets, there would not be ho strows in every city in the world.