Waste packaging from a burgeoning and newly legalized marijuana industry is now littering streets across the country, adding to a global crisis of plastic waste.
In New York, regulators are crafting the state’s first-ever rules for the retail sale of recreational marijuana, requiring sustainable packaging requirements.
But at least one prominent environmental advocate fears New York – and other states grappling with a new and booming industry – aren’t requiring enough responsibility on producers for the environmental impacts of their products.
Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a group working to end plastics waste, said the best time for a nascent industry to bake in sustainability principles is when it’s just getting established – and for legalized cannabis sales, that means now.
“When states approve recreational use of marijuana, they should create environmental standards for packaging, otherwise, we’re going to have this entire new universe of plastic waste of the worst kind,” said Enck, a former regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Marijuana in medical dispensaries or retail stores is sold in many forms, including cigarettes, oils, resins or as edible products, such as brownies, cookies or gummies. Plastic litter, in the form of plastic sachets or pouches and spent cannabis oil vape cartridges made of plastic are already getting kicked to the curb in cities where marijuana sales are legal.
An industry-wide discussion on pot and plastic is happening at a pivotal time.
Earlier this year, 175 countries including the United States coalesced around an urgent need and began working toward a global United Nations treaty to curtail plastic waste. U.N. officials have described the global plastics problem as part of a “triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution.”
The cannabis industry itself recognizes the problem, said Derek Thomas, a former marketing and advertising committee member of the National Cannabis Industry Association, and the chief growth officer of a company, AE Global, that sells packaging to the cannabis industry.
“Everybody is looking for solutions that not only make us and the consumer feel better,” Thomas said, “but also have impact and integrity behind them.”
‘the ocean doesn’t care’
New Frontier Data, a business group that tracks the cannabis industry, projects that sales will double from $32 billion this year to $58 billion-$72 billion by 2030, depending on how many additional states legalize the product.
In New York, the recreational legalization law went into effect on March 31, 2021, and since then, a new state agency, the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), governed by a Cannabis Control Board, has been working to implement comprehensive regulations for adult-use, medical and hemp cannabis.
The office is charged with issuing licenses and rules for how and when businesses can participate in the new industry. Environmental sustainability, such as retail packaging, is one of the issues the office is working on, said Lyla Hunt, the deputy director of public health and campaigns for the OCM.
Under New York’s proposed regulations, marijuana outlets will have up to two years to submit an environmental sustainability program for cannabis product packaging.
Those plans may include strategies such as reusing sanitized containers, using non-plastic packaging, or using plastic packaging made with at least 25 percent post-consumer recycled content.
“What I have been telling them is recycled content (in plastic packaging) doesn’t really help,” said Enck, who is working to get state lawmakers to put more environmentally friendly language into New York’s legalization bill.
“When plastics get littered, the ocean doesn’t care if it’s a recycled content container or a virgin plastic container,” she said. “What they really need to focus on is reusable packaging.”
Her suggestion is that reusable packaging should be made from durable material that is not plastic and can be reused at least 50 times. It could include packaging from metal, paper, cardboard, wood, glass or other materials not made from fossil fuels. In addition, she recommends the packaging include at least a $1 deposit.
Brittany Carbone, the chairwoman of the sustainability committee for the Cannabis Association of New York, said she understands the problem, including how only a small amount of plastic is recycled, the oceans are filling with plastics and microplastics are ubiquitous.
She gives New York credit for working toward a solution.
“It’s an issue with many consumer products,” said Carbone, who grows hemp and now marijuana at Tricolla Farms in upstate New York. “Although we’re not necessarily creating more plastic waste than any other business, we have a unique opportunity to address it.”
too much plastic
In California, a new Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, signed into law on June 30, could force the industry to rethink packaging in that state.
But just how much change the law could bring to the industry remains uncertain.
Other states with legalized marijuana are also struggling with too much plastic packaging, and one reason is because state laws require more security than is needed for some retail products, said Amanda Reiman, chief knowledge officer with New Frontier Data.
Non-plastic packaging like paper is available for safer products. But paper is harder to make child-resistant, a common requirement that often means more plastic for packaging, said Albert Moe, owner of MM Green Packaging Solutions in Santa Cruz, California.
The new California law requires all packaging to be recyclable or compostable, cutting plastic packaging by 25 percent in 10 years and requiring 65 percent of all single-use plastic packaging to be recycled in the same timeframe.
California’s Department of Cannabis Control, which regulates cannabis packaging, is working to determine how the law will affect its licensees that produce products sold in single-use packaging, an agency spokesperson said.
In the meantime, many people think people selling marijuana legally are making a lot of money, but the profit margins are slim, Moe said.
“That’s pushing them,” he said, “to go to these plastic pouches.”
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