It’s not easy being green, or is it? In honor of Earth Month, cannabis companies look closely at their environmental impact.

Cannabis and innovation go hand-in-hand. From growing to packaging technology, consuming to creating, cannabis influences many innovative ideas. Innovation in cannabis isn’t always as visible as it is in other industries. Cannabis is still budding and because it’s been illegal for so long, much of its innovation has happened behind closed doors.

As space continues to grow, entrepreneurs are becoming more comfortable sharing their ideas and advocating for a more transparent industry. The cannabis community is ripe with innovators developing thoughtful solutions to emerging problems. Here are a just a few bringing their ingenuity to the space.

The preference of eco-conscious cannabis consumers to buy environmentally-friendly products has motivated many businesses to clean up their act.

Earth Day 2021 is upon us, and cannabis companies across the industry are mobilizing to take “sustainability” from buzzword to business practice. Earth Day was founded in 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson as a national teach-in on the environment to raise awareness about issues like pollution and pesticide use.

While the cannabis industry has long been associated with the word “green”, the environmental impacts of production, packaging, distribution and materials sourcing for products like vape pens are often anything but.

If you’re new to cannabis cooking and are ready to dump a ton of fresh bud straight into a brownie mix, stop! This is probably a bad idea, and science is here to tell you why.

Raw cannabis probably won’t get you high

Studies have shown that there are three active ingredients, or cannabinoids, that produce the effects of cannabis that you’re most likely familiar with: THC, CBD and CBG.

But they don’t start life this way.

Most people at least somewhat familiar with weed will probably be familiar with THC and CBD for their ability to get you high. But when ingested in a raw format they won’t have this effect.

Cannabis extraction equipment represents one of the most innovative sectors in the industry, with new products and constantly evolving techniques for processing raw plant material.

Among other areas, marijuana and hemp companies are developing:

In Florida last year, nearly 15 percent of hemp crops failed due to poor performance. The plants didn't grow properly for reasons most farmers still can't pinpoint because they never tested samples along the way. Yet every wasted acre added up to significant losses in profits and resources. What if hemp growers had a way to prevent such disasters? What if they took the opportunity to test the soil and plants before harvest? 

Akerna CEO Jessica Billingsley speaks with MCN about the future of the medical cannabis industry, regarding technology, finance and cannabis policy.

Jessica Billingsley, who will be delivering the keynote address at the ICBC Global Investment Forum on 7 May, is CEO of cannabis technology consolidation firm Akerna. In 2018, she launched the One Woman Challenge, which challenges participants to support and encourage women in business at a time when female representation in the workforce is declining. She speaks with MCN about technology in the cannabis industry and the future of US drugs policy.

As conscious consumerism enters the cannabis world, purchasing decisions may be based more on fair trade and regenerative farming than on orange hairs and THC percentage. With legalization taking hold, the industry has shifted from trying to protect people from the police to trying to protect small businesses from the behemoths that are inevitably entering the cannabis space. But while a lot of support for small cannabis businesses comes out of a concern for the people involved, there’s another party to be considered: the planet.

The use of synthetic cannabinoids is a controversial issue in the cannabis industry. It could be an opportunity to advance the research and development into rare cannabinoids and their medical uses, but synthetics are also misused to tragic effect in the illicit market.

Legal synthetics vs. Illegal synthetics

All synthetic cannabinoids are produced by genetically engineering living cells like algae, bacteria, yeast, or organic chemistry (synthetic chemical biology). In the legal market, we can use synthetic cannabinoids to treat specific health conditions, but they must meet FDA approval and work the same as naturally occurring cannabinoids.

British Columbia’s Ministry of Agriculture recently released a fact sheet describing the symptoms and spread of the most common diseases affecting cannabis plants. The list includes Fusarium, Pythium, Powdery Mildew, Botrytis, and Hop Latent Viroid (HLVd). Many of the pathogens cause stunted growth as well as reduced yield and potency. Others, such as pythium can cause plant death.