29 minute read
THE LIFE
High on Color
Dressing loud is the new dressing down. Can bright colors and bold patterns really elevate your mood? Welcome to the brave new world of dopamine dressing.
TEXT STEPHANIE WILSON
COVID-19 lockdown sent us into our sweats. We sat in monochrome cotton surrounded by neutral-colored walls for so long our brains actually lost the ability to accurately track the passage of time. We became starved for stimulation. We spent 18 months in our khaki-colored apartments, and when we came out, we collectively decided it was time to banish the beige.
It’s no wonder we came out craving color— bright, bold, eye-catching color in rich, saturated shades of magenta, sage green, and eclectic blue. We wanted to wrap ourselves in it, to cover our bodies from head to toe in vibrant shades.
Color is a mood, and we can’t get enough of it right now. Vibrant hues and bold shades are the antidote to the dark days of winter, and our lives are more saturated with color than ever this year. The post-lockdown world is looking a little more bright and a lot more vibrant. This is the feel-good trend we need right now. From rainbow dresses to electric blue suits, the hottest 2022 fashion trends are setting a bold mood— and we’re getting high on color.
Brain Chemistry
That high, in fact, comes from dopamine, the brain chemical that infl uences your mood, emotions, and motivation. Your brain releases dopamine into your body when it’s anticipating a reward, which is what motivates you to do the thing that delivers the reward. Color is closely associated with emotions—we use it to describe our moods. We say we’re “feeling blue” when we’re sad, “seeing red” when angry, “tickled pink” when fi lled with glee. But does your mood dictate your color choices or do your color choices dictate your mood? The science is out on that.
What’s not up for debate is that as humans, we give objects (including clothes) symbolic meaning. So our brains start associating that t-shirt we were wearing
(LEFT TO RIGHT) PHOTOS COURTESY HENRIK VIBSKOV SS22/COPENHAGEN FASHION WEEK; RICHARD MALONE X MULBERRY SS22/IMAX; BROGGER SS22/COPENHAGEN FASHION WEEK; OTTOLINGER SS22/IMAX; BLUMARINE SS22/IMAX when we had the best night ever with positive memories, and then anticipate making more of them whenever we wear it. It’s that anticipation of reward that triggers the release of dopamine into our systems, ultimately driving us to do it all again.
We wore it, we liked it, so we wore it again. Then we had to up our dose. Now, head-to-toe monochrome magenta is the norm—and we’re never going back to neutrals.
Dopamine Dressing
So what exactly is dopamine dressing? It’s where self-care meets style, where fashion intersects with mindfulness. It’s the big trend right now, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. It’s also simple to follow.
Dopamine dressing is choosing to wear the things that bring you joy—choosing something because it’s fun, not just because it’s practical. It’s not going to your closet and being happy with clothes that are clean and fi t, but mindfully selecting items that jive with your vibe. It’s about wrapping your body in hues that make you happy and accessorizing with sparkly or feathery abandon. It’s about elevating your style and defi ning your aesthetic by choosing pieces in the fabrics, cuts, colors, and prints that send a surge of confi dence through your system raising your vibe so high you’ll be giving off Lil Nas X energy.
The Art of Forest Bathing
In these days of social distance and world-wide anxiety, one of the best things we can do for ourselves is connect to the trees.
TEXT DOUG SCHNITZSPAHN
In Japan the term shinrin-yoku refers to the act of getting out and simply walking in the woods and breathing in—both metaphorically and actually— the healing aromas of the trees. The term roughly translates as “forest bathing,” or, more romantically, as taking in the essence of the forest, walking quietly, aware. Shinrin-yoku is not just some poetic Japanese ideal either (indeed, it was coined as a Japanese Forest Agency marketing term in the early 1980s)—it’s based on the healing properties of protective odors, called phytoncides, exuded by the trees. It’s taken so seriously that the Japanese consider forest bathing an important way to combat the stress of our insidiously busy work world— in fact, a piece in Mother Earth News reported that Japanese researchers have proven that walks in the woods can actually lower cortisol, thus stress levels.
I certainly don’t do enough forest bathing anymore. It seems odd that I live right down the street from a trail that wanders into stands of ponderosa pine and sandstone covered in lichen, a place where bears and mountain lions and songbirds make their homes. But I’m not up there forest bathing, soaking it in. When I do head into those woods, it’s to go for a trail run or walk the dog while checking work emails on my phone. It’s to power through, even if I do fi nd a few mindful moments.
That was not always the case. When I was still in my 20s, I spent six seasons in Montana’s Beaverhead-Deerlodge National
Forest, building trails and fi ghting fi res. It was, quite simply, the best job I have ever had in my life. Each day, we hiked, hauled big tools, worked the earth, went back to camp, cooked good food, drank clear water, read, slept under the stars… and often engaged in forest bathing.
After swinging a pulaski all day long, I would be pretty sated physically. I didn’t feel like I needed to go for a trail run or mountain bike ride or get in a damn workout. I would bathe in the forest, taking slow, silent walks into the secret places off the trail around our camp.
Things happened. Subtle things. Sometimes powerful things. Walking solo at twilight on the long, bare backbone of Shedhorn Ridge above stands of Douglas fi r, I watched three hawks ride thermals up from the open air to circle above my head. On the way down, in the near dark, I heard elk running through the trees. Another time in the Gravelley Range, I watched as two coyotes harassed a doe in thick sagebrush. Walking later in almost the same spot, I suddenly came upon her fawn— small, pure, curled up in the high grass and shaking with fear. Other times I would just take in the, I don’t know, sense? Energy? Vibe? of these untouched parts of the Madison Range.
On days off , I would get out and hit it hard— fi sh, climb, bike, hike to spring ski couloirs. Even in the midst of these quiet walks, I would sometimes push it—climb some small unnamed peak, break into a run— but it all stemmed from a desire to start walking and see where the forest took me. That mindset is what seems all too easy to lose when the woods are just our playground.
The Swiss writer Herman Hesse said: “When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not diffi cult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent.”
I’m older now. And I feel that deep sadness— even more so with the pandemic continuing to rage, megafi res consuming my town, and our sense of civil society upended. I worry that I have not lived exactly the way I wanted to live, that I am facing down nothingness. Sometimes fi shing helps take it away—the rhythm and mindfulness of casting, watching the fl y on the water, the drift. But sometimes, even that seems like another moment when I’m missing something important. It’s at these times when I lift up my rod and take a step back from the steam. I indulge in a little shinrin-yoku. I listen to how the breeze makes the slightest song in the aspen leaves. I get the hint of heat bringing off a scent of root beer from the ponderosas. I take a moment to contemplate the branches far above and the way the light plays in them. I appreciate trees that have grown roots in rock or still stand even when they have been undercut by the stream.
Then I’ll get back up. I check my fl y and line. I head back down to the stream and cast and sometimes catch and feel the joy of being once more. A little bathing in the forest is all we need to get back on track.
THE FUTURE’S SO BRIGHT
The cannabis industry is toppling every capitalist metric for success—even without banking and tax deductions—but the shades need to come o if it’s going to deal with tough issues like consumer safety, social justice, and an abhorrent carbon footprint.
TEXT ROBYN GRIGGS LAWRENCE
Ten years ago, DaVinci CEO Cort Smith saw cannabis legalization on the horizon and envisioned a nation of home growers, obsessing over genetics and nutrients. He went to his fi rst High Times Cannabis Cup expecting to see farmers in fl annel shirts showing off salad bowls overfl owing with their fi nest fl owers. Instead, he found extraction artists loading rigs with oils and waxes—21st-century weed—and he realized the market was never going to be about growing.
Personally, Smith still prefers fl ower to concentrates, but he ingests his herb using one of DaVinci’s precision-temperature vaporizers made from zirconia and medical-grade parts, an apparatus so aspirational Gizmodo says it could be made by Apple. DaVinci, with roughly $12 million in sales, was acquired by global cannabis accessories platform Greenlane Holdings for $20 million late last year.
In so many ways, Smith’s story is that of the cannabis industry. With millions in capital fl ooding in, multi-billion-dollar companies being built from mergers and acquisitions, and global sales predicted to reach $46 billion by 2025, the industry has come a long way since voters in Colorado and Washington legalized adult use in 2012. It’s beating every metric of capitalist success, even without access to basic banking services or the ability to deduct business expenses (and not a lot of hope either will happen any time soon).
In late October, 20,000 or so industry insiders returned to Las Vegas for the annual MJBizCon convention (after taking 2020 off because of COVID-19) to talk about where the industry stands and where it’s headed. Top of mind were the brand-new New York market, predicted to be worth $1 billion, and speculation about when unregulated Oklahoma might crash and burn. Mike Tyson and Lil’ Kim paraded through, with entourages, to announce the latest in a string of celebrity cannabis brands. One of the week’s most coveted invitations was a golf tournament at a prestigious course in Boulder City, where C-suite executives made deals while drinking craft beer and smoking rare cigars.
Vince Ning, founder of California-based wholesale-cannabis platform Nabis, was struck by the tremendous diff erence in professionalism he saw at this year’s conference. “There’s a lot more sustainability in the industry—maybe not necessarily from an environmental perspective, but businesses are more sustainable,” he said during the show’s last hour. “In 2018, it felt kind of like the cryptocurrency space, like there was funny
money fl oating around. But we’ve seen a lot of those players who had unscalable market tactics fall by the wayside. COVID-19 created a pressure cooker, and what’s sifted to the top, I think, is really healthy.”
Redefi ning the Industry
MJBiz was a showcase of products and services that refl ect morphing consumer demands and increasingly sophisticated ways of manipulating the plant, unbundling and spotlighting its various parts, and more benefi cially or powerfully delivering its eff ects.
Minor cannabinoids such as CBC, CBG, THCV, and CBN, which are being marketed as sleep aids and energy boosters, were all the rage. Ning—whose company distributes more than 125 brands in California, giving him a good view of the overall market—said every one of the still-obscure cannabinoids could be a billion-dollar category in itself, but only if genetics were developed to support them.
Cheeba Chews, the Colorado company that put edibles on the map with its 175mg deca-dose taffi es in the 2010s, was at the show to introduce a wellness line containing microdoses of THC along with CBN, CBD, CBG, and
THCV—products Chief Marketing Offi cer Eric Leslie considers a breakthrough for consumers who want more than just psychoactive eff ects. “I’ve been here from the beginning. I have a decade of experience,” he said. “That gut instinct we had about edibles being a rocket ship at the beginning–we’re right back there again. We have an opportunity to redefi ne the standards of our industry so that it’s not THC only and introduce a wider demographic of people to cannabis.”
Edibles themselves were a hot topic at the show, as sales are driven to new heights by a pandemic forcing the need for more discretion and non-combustible consumption options. “The sales trend BRIGHT LEADERS FOR A BRIGHT FUTURE
From left: Cort Smith, CEO of DaVinci; Vince Ning, founder of Nabis; Eric Leslie, Chief Marketing O cer of Cheeba Chews
MUSHROOM MADNESS
Perhaps the biggest buzz at MJBiz, as it has been at every cannabis event from coast to coast over the past year, was not about the cannabis plant at all. It was about the meteoric rise of psychedelics, or what many are calling the “next cannabis.”
Allay Consulting CEO Kim Stuck, who helped write Colorado’s adultuse regulations in 2014, is among the ood of pioneers moving over to psychedelics. Now living in Portland, Oregon, she’s on a work group helping the state write the rules for Oregon’s newly legalized therapeutic psychedelic market, and she believes the future is psilocybin. “It’s going to be a market,” she said during MJBiz. “It’s not yet, but licenses will start being given out in December 2023.”
Crafting Colorado’s cannabis rules was a thankless task that Stuck said involved “lots of tears and lots of yelling,” but she’s hopeful this time will be di erent. At the very least, she said, “I hope we don’t take as many bricks in the head.”
is absolutely clear in any market you’re in, without exception: edibles, edibles, edibles,” said Alex Levine, CEO of Green Dragon, which owns dispensaries in Colorado, California, and Florida. “Every year they become more popular. Absolutely, every year, we see more people shifting to edibles.”
During a quick chat outside Azuca’s booth showcasing a cannabinoid-encapsulation process that makes edibles’ eff ects more rapid and predictable, CEO Kim Rael said she believes edibles will grow
faster than the overall industry in the next few years because “new adapters will not want to smoke or vape.” She believes fast-acting technology will transform edibles much like broadband transformed the internet. “Why would anybody suff er through slow, unpredictable dial-up once that quality was available?” she asked.
Branding What?
Trade shows are, more than anything, branding opportunities. MJBiz was no exception. The executive team from premium Colorado grower Veritas was showing off new color-classifi ed packaging matching moods with terpene profi les and off ering QR codes to terpene-testing results—all part of the company’s strategy to become known for consistency and quality while educating consumers. Father-andson team Rich and Rick Batenburg of Cliintel Capital Management Group (CCMG) were there to position their vape brand, The Clear, as the Coca-Cola of cannabis.
Though CCMG’s holdings include two grows in Denver (along with companies involved in every-
thing from cultivation to manufacturing), Chief Investment Offi cer Rich Batenburg doesn’t see cultivation as the future. “That will get commoditized, 100 percent, as will the distribution channels of dispensaries,” he said. “The power is going to shift to brands. And the more mature the market, the more powerful those brands will become. It will become a lot more like alcohol. You don’t pick a liquor store because you love the store. You pick it because you love the brands they have.”
Perhaps, said Ning, but he hasn’t seen brand loyalty emerge as a big factor yet. While consumers are developing some affi nity for branded manufactured prodBRIGHT LEADERS FOR A BRIGHT FUTURE
From left: Alex Levine, CEO of Green Dragon; Kim Rael Sanchez, CEO of Azuca
ucts and edibles, they care more about strains than branding when buying fl ower—which still dominates the market. “If people are looking up fl ower, they look up strains. If they’re looking up vapes, they look at brands,” he said.
Falling Behind
Amid the positioning and projecting, there were also dispiriting signs the industry is picking up some of mainstream corporate culture’s worst habits. Leadership is becoming less diverse, and lead-
ing companies are leaving crucial issues like consumer safety, social justice, and carbon emissions for nonprofi ts to handle.
Regulatory eff orts to support ownership among the communities most harmed by the drug war haven’t made any diff erence and sometimes do more harm than good. Less than 2 percent of cannabis business owners are Black, compared with 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to Leafly’s 2021 Jobs Report. Minority executives made up 28 percent of all cannabis leaders in 2019 and dropped to 13 percent (about the national average) in 2021, while women accounted for 37 percent of leaders in 2019 but only 22 percent (below the national average of 30 percent) in 2021.
“Women and minorities are not counted in this industry, not fi nanced in this industry, and are not moving forward in this industry,” Simply Pure CEO Wanda James, the nation’s fi rst Black woman to own a dispensary, said during the most-talked-about session at MJBiz. James said seasoned Black entrepreneurs with licenses to operate cannabis businesses struggle to get funding. “Our businesses are not validated in the same way as a
25-year-old white guy in California that has no business experience or licenses,” she said.
This failure to live up to inclusionary ideals is, at least, a conversation. How growing weed is cooking the planet is not, despite study after study showing indoor cultivation taking up a bigger and bigger piece of the carbon-emissions pie. Growing an ounce of indoor emits about the same amount of carbon as burning a tank of gas, one of those studies by Colorado State engineers found. “This industry is developing and expanding very quickly without consideration for the environment,” the study’s senior author told Gizmodo.
As for consumer safety, nonprofits like Realm of Caring are crunching reams of data that’s never been available before to prove the plant’s effi cacy, develop guidelines and protocols for use, and encourage insurance companies to compensate medical marijuana patients. Development Offi cer Adam Young said Realm of Caring has created a seal of approval that entails visits to farms and extraction and shipping facilities as well as product testing. So far, only fi ve companies have been certifi ed.
These are challenges, to be sure.
But as Smith was quick to point out during a chat in the MJBizCon press room (about a month before his company’s acquisition was announced), mainstreaming has plenty of upside, too.
“Ten years ago, we were crazy stoners, trying to carve a life out of the back alleys of semi-legality. Now there’s a lot more awareness, and I think that’s great,” he said. “I’m a fan. I believe cannabis provokes good conversation, friendships, and solution language to problems. The more popular this tool gets, the more problems get solved.” BRIGHT LEADERS FOR A BRIGHT FUTURE
From left: Richard Batenburg II and Richard Batenburg III, cofounders of Cliintel Capital Management Group; Wanda James, CEO of Simply Pure
THE FACES of CANNABIS
Through his lens, Chris Vicari captured the personalities of California’s cannabis farmers and leaders as the industry was shucking o old stereotypes about the plant and the people who grow it for a living.
TEXT DOUG SCHNITZSPAHN PHOTOS CHRIS VICARI
When photographer Chris Vicari fi st began shooting portraits of personalities in the cannabis space, he had to build trust with his subjects. After all, cannabis had just become legal in California, where he was working for Green Flower Media, which was on a mission to help the nascent industry present itself as a professional business, and growers were skeptical. “A lot of them would tell me to just shoot their shoulders,” he says. “It wasn’t working.”
But Vicari, who had previously worked on creating the images for a video game of the Deadliest Catch, wanted real connection to capture images of business people and industry pioneers who had been treated with scorn as cannabis tired to shake off the stigma of stoner culture
Kevin Jodrey
and illegality. So he focused on what mattered most to the people he was photographing: their work in the fi eld and passion for the plant.
“I wanted to make sure that there was a connection to the land with everybody I shot and completely ignored any kind of stigma or preconceived ideas about cannabis growers,” he says. “I just wanted to show them as salt-of-theearth people who are out there working hard. I wanted them to look smart. I wanted them to look badass. I wanted them to look respectable.”
The success of that approach shows in Vicari’s up-close-and-personal images of personalities including farmer Swami Chaitanya and industry leader Steve Deangelo, who had devoted themselves to cannabis when it was still heavily stigmatized. Vicari’s portraits reveal the human, hard-working side of an industry just beginning to gain mainstream acceptance.
Sunshine Johnston
Derek Gilman
“Towards the end, people started trusting me,” he says. “We were really embedded with this group of people who were the leaders of of their industry. And I got an all-access pass to their lives.”
This gallery highlights Vicari’s work for Green Flower and captures the vibe of an industry in the process of gaining respect.
Steve Deangelo (left) and Chris Vicari
Nikki Lastreto Wendy Korn
Swami Chaitanya
the green future
The dirty secret about cannabis? As the industry grows, the cultivation of the plant for pro t can take a heavy toll on the planet. But concerned companies like Tallahassee-based Trulieve are banding together to create innovative practices and rigorous standards to ensure sustainable cultivation and commerce.
TEXT EUGENE BUCHANAN
The cannabis industry is growing like a weed. According to the Leafl y Cannabis Harvest Report released last November, US farmers are producing 2,278 metric tons of cannabis per year. That’s a lot of pot—enough to fi ll 11,000 dump trucks. Line that cannabis convoy up on I-95 and it’d stretch from Miami all the way up to Pompano Beach—a glorious scene of rolling green on its way to deliver the country’s fi fth most valuable crop.
While fun to imagine, this hypothetical scene would be an environmental nightmare. Garbage trucks are one of the least fuel effi cient vehicles on the road. Plus, the optics would be bad for a nascent industry emerging from the black market with an unprecedented opportunity to make the world a greener place.
With federal legalization becoming more and more likely, the industry can adopt environmentally sustainable practices as a national standard from the outset. Instead of later trying to reduce the environmental impact of operations that already exist, cannabis companies can do it right from the start, ever more necessary as legalization spreads around the globe— something the plant’s generally nature-loving consumers are expecting.
At least one report estimates the cannabis industry’s footprint already accounts for more than 1% of US electricity consumption. That fi gure continues to rise as the industry blossoms, in part because cannabis is an energy-intensive crop. For a plant with a nickname that suggests it grows as easily as a dandelion, cannabis isn’t an easy plant to cultivate—at least not the high-quality stuff that consumers demand. Between 40% and 80% of growers do so indoors, contributing to the industry’s huge energy footprint. Cannabis plants demand warm and low-humidity environments. Along with the grow lights that simulate the sun, they need carbon dioxide pumped in, oxygen pumped out, and lots of fresh air circulated, all of which requires energy. says Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers. “Applying sustainable business practices will not only have a positive social and environmental impact, it’s the right thing to do.”
Trulieve operates 2.4 million square feet of enclosed indoor facilities and greenhouse cultivation space across Florida, a state particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate
change. Environment is one of the company’s top considerations when it comes to business operations. The Florida greenhouses are a prime example of innovation at work—some of them require zero electricity to operate, containing zero fans or lights, with six-foot sidewalls that allow as much passive airfl ow as possible.
“We’ve been focused on sustainability at every stage of our growth,” says Rivers. The company’s inaugural Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) report, released last November, outlines sustainability at every stage, providing a roadmap for other cannabis operators to follow.
“While we believe our industry understands its environmental impact and the importance of sustainability in general,” Rivers says, “it is still vital that we are proactively setting goals and benchmarks within our
setting a standard
Tallahassee-headquartered Trulieve leads the industry’s sustainability eff orts. With its recent acquisition of Arizona’s Harvest Health and Recreation, the company is now the nation’s largest cannabis retailer, with a footprint spanning 11 states and more than 160 retail locations. It also operates around 3.1 million square feet of grow and production space.
With that much impact, the company is positioned to infl uence how things are done in the cannabis space. As a cultivator, manufacturer, and processor of cannabis, Trulieve can move the needle on responsible growth and transparency.
“The industry recognizes how important it is to create a positive social and economic impact in our communities. So much of that starts with making sustainability a priority,” DEEP DIVE
Read Sensi’s full Q&A with Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers (shown left) at sensimag.com.
own organizations as the industry matures. This is a relatively young but rapidly growing industry that does not yet have standard sustainability measures in place.”
The company has several climate initiatives and is conducting a baseline carbon footprint analysis to establish an emissions target and long-term performance metrics. In addition to reducing use of electricity at its facilities, Trulieve recycles cardboard, metal, pallets, electronic waste, and batteries, and it diverts organic waste to compost. Drip irrigation and rain-and-runoff recapture systems reduce water usage. More energy-effi cient automated systems monitor and control indoor cultivation. Trulieve is exploring solar-generated electricity as a back-up for its facilities.
The company’s greenhouses in Gadsden County were engineered to recapture 100% of all rainwater and irrigation runoff , allowing for the recycling of fertilizer—including the company’s proprietary fertilizer created in partnership with a local company. This not only promotes local economies, it decreases overall costs and reduces emissions that would otherwise be generated by trucking fertilizer from other locations. When deciding on which new markets to target and where to open new dispensaries, Trulieve takes into account delivery route effi ciency from processing facilities to ensure they’re reducing travel time and associated emissions.
defining sustainability
Trulieve is part of the Sustainable Cannabis Coalition (SCC), a group of industry leaders that seeks to improve sustainability in cultivation, manufacturing, and distribution.
sustainability snapshot
According to an Environmental Sustainability Study conducted by the National Cannabis Industry Association, the following areas are hospots for better practices.
Soil Degradation. Similar to traditional agriculture, cannabis cultivation can cause soil erosion, nutrient loss, reduction in soilstored organic carbon, and increased acidity. Sustainable practices like soil testing can reduce this degradation. Companies like Pure Life Carbon, whose Charged Carbon soil is the world’s rst carbon negative, zero waste grow medium, are helping. Water. Cannabis, like many crops, often relies upon arti cial irrigation, the runo of which contains pesticides, heavy metals, excess nutrients and other pollutants. Indoor cultivation puts pressure on municipal water systems and wastewater treatment facilities. Energy. An estimated 63% of commercial cultivation is conducted indoors, with 20% in partial-indoor operations like greenhouses. The energy used for lighting, environmental controls, and hydration require up to 5,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per kilogram of output. Air Quality. Emissions of air pollutants occur at multiple points in cultivation, processing and transportation. Volatile organic compounds are also emitted from plants as they grow, as well as from solvents during extraction, contributing to ground-level ozone. Emission mitigation companies like Byers Scienti c, which works with Trulieve, combine all air mitigation into one unit with a low energy draw. Waste. GAIACA Waste Revitalization, the nation’s rst licensed cannabis waste disposal company that composts plant stems and leaves and re-purposes packaging materials, estimates the industry generates 150 million tons of waste each year. Environmental impacts include contributing to land lls, ocean pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Add consumer waste from vape pen cartridges and single-use plastic and the problem grows. One solution: abolishing the 50/50 mixing rule for marijuana plant waste, in favor of composting and onsite anaerobic digestion.
Together with a cohort of 20 cannabis or cannabis-adjacent companies, Trulieve and the SCC support independent research and are pushing for the tools needed to make measuring and reporting on sustainability more effi cient and impactful.
With support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency, the coalition seeks to establish green cannabis policies and standards across local, state, regional, and national levels. “The cannabis industry is facing signifi cant challenges but they’re related to all those we face as a modern society,” says SCC co-founder Shawn Cooney. “And consumers are becoming more demanding in terms of their products’ value, safety standards, and sustainability.”
The SCC is collaborating with Trulieve and other industry leaders to develop standards. “It’s not only critical what a business is doing today, but they have to establish baselines and goals—from cultivation and product manufacturing, to packaging and on through the supply chain,” says Cooney. But fi rst, it needs the tools to make this happen.
“We all have a great opportunity—and responsibility—to defi ne the best practices that will codify sustainability as standard cannabis-industry practice,” says Rivers. The SCC is working with software company Sustain.Life to develop a tool to help companies track their emissions. It’s also collaborating with Dartmouth’s Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society to perform a complete evaluation and system redesign for indoor grow facilities. The team is investigating every light type, plus how to integrate solar panels, reduce HVAC usage, introduce automation, and much more. The project explores a “radically effi cient” cannabis cultivation facility that could produce energy savings of 40 to 80 percent.
Cooney, an urban farmer who’s been producing food using controlled environmental agriculture (CEA) for years, grows leafy greens year round in recycled shipping containers in East Boston at his Corner Stalk Farms. He says the cannabis industry is almost identical to CEA. Sustainability is on its radar, but, he says, “like most industries, it still has a long way to go.”
Everyone agrees: the fi rst step is greater transparency and collaboration. “We know there’s still work to do,” says Rivers. “The cannabis industry is not slowing down. We anticipate more companies will be proactive and transparent in sharing their own standards and goals around sustainability, so we can collectively change the industry for the better.”
—Kim Rivers, CEO, Trulieve
