The medical benefits of cannabis are championed by its supporters, a call further amplified as national legalization gains traction. Yet, a movement steeped in social justice and progressive politics is clashing with environmental concerns that continue to go unaddressed, said industry officials and cannabis supporters interviewed by Ideastream Public Media.
Marijuana’s sustainability problem stems from legal restrictions as well as the inherent issues associated with industrial agriculture. While the public may trumpet the medicinal value of cannabis, the plant’s cultivation necessitates high energy demands, noted Nathan Rutz, director of soil at Rust Belt Riders, a Cleveland food waste recycling service.
Ohio regulatory rules have forced cannabis crops indoors, where artificial lights and robust climate control systems act as enormous power sucks, said Rutz. What’s more, the Ohio Department of Commerce provides licenses based on an operation’s size, with Level I cultivators allowed 25,000 square feet of growing space. As an acre is 43,560 square feet, producers have no choice but to build their own facility if they want a sizable crop, said Rutz.
“If you’re a business that wants to have product year-round, you’re going to grow indoors,” he said. “You’re burning coal, or collecting sunlight in photovoltaics, converting it to electricity, then converting it back to light. When right above our heads is the golden glory of the sun. No type of cultivation on a serious agricultural scale is done indoors.”
Windowless factory farms create a resource-intensive cultivation environment with a carbon footprint 16 to 100 times larger than that of outdoor grows, according to recent United Nations findings.
Climate control in cannabis cultivation encompasses the meticulous regulation of temperature, humidity, air movement, carbon dioxide levels and artificial lighting – a “nonstop luxury spa treatment” mostly unprecedented in agriculture, Rutz said.
“Cannabis is like having ducks in a foie gras factory, versus a corn field or an apple orchard or animals grazing in a pasture,” said Rutz.
Waste not...
The industry’s rapid growth will only lead to more negative ecological impacts if left unattended, added Rutz.
The global market, projected to balloon to $444 billion by 2030, is a water-intensive undertaking. especially for large-scale indoor production. Facilities with climate control and artificial lighting often have lower humidity, leading to increased consumption compared to outdoor grows in naturally moist surroundings.
Agricultural runoff from cannabis, meanwhile, can poison soil and watersheds with pesticides, excess nutrients and toxic heavy metals originating from farm soil, Rutz said.
Plastic waste is another huge environmental protection issue facing marijuana, said Kevin Shaw, who educates patients about medical cannabis at Shangri-La Dispensary, a Missouri-based company that opened a storefront in Cleveland’s St. Clair-Superior neighborhood late last year.
Although unused plant matter and other cultivation waste is a concern, the true pain point is consumer waste, Shaw said. Single-use containers, vape cartridges and pens, and redundant packaging are overlooked in an already inefficient marketplace, he noted.
Companies also view wasteful packing materials like glass as a sign of higher status, sometimes putting small cannabis flowers in oversized jars as a marketing ploy.
“By weight, the percentage of product to packaging ratio is sometimes 10 to 1,” said Shaw. “You’re maybe getting 2.8 grams of flower, but you’re carrying 16 grams of glass. It’s just not being addressed – it’s the standard that’s been held and everyone just said, ‘Okay, this is the way we’re going to do it for now.’”
Shaw has been studying recycling solutions around discarded cannabis trash since becoming a medical marijuana patient in 2019. In 2024, he hopes to raise funding for a startup to clean and repurpose marijuana packaging. As cannabis is currently deemed a Schedule 1 drug by Ohio, recycling centers won’t take containers holding residue or even with stickers with a dispensary’s name.
Ongoing stigma around cannabis makes devising a recycling-friendly business plan especially difficult, added Shaw.
“Anyone who has tried to come up with these solutions has been shot down,” Shaw said. “This ideology that if there’s any remnants of cannabis left over, then potheads are just going to try to consume it to its last possible molecule. If we have a collection bin, they’re worried about people taking used glass jars and trying to scrape out all the used THC.”
An industry of possibility
With cannabis embraced by proponents as a natural product with numerous humanitarian benefits, the larger industry must become more focused on the plant’s environmental potential, said Rutz of Rust Belt Riders.
To that end, Rutz has developed a special soil for cultivating marijuana, utilizing food scraps his company already collects from restaurants, grocery stores and homes across Cuyahoga County.
Rutz collaborated with Akron cannabis grower Galenas and other producers to devise the soil recipe, a blend of food leavings that pack a potent microbial punch, he said.
The wider marketplace has the potential to be more cognizant about its unused plant scraps as well, Rutz said.
“What I’d really like to see is cannabis facilities grinding up their stalks and leaves and mixing it with wood chips - or other compostable material – instead of putting it in the trash,” said Rutz. “Cannabis parts would compost just fine, and we could keep them out of dumps.”
While cannabis has gotten a free pass from the public about its larger environmental impacts, a vocal consumer base can help alter that landscape, said Shaw, who’s become a sustainability advocate in the industry during his time with Shangri-La.
“If a voice can be heard by the companies putting the products into these packages – or the companies supplying those packages – the voice of the customer is the loudest voice,” Shaw said. “Right now that’s the best avenue until we start creating those relationships where producers and packagers are on the same page about sustainability.”
