A newly published study of product packaging from the commercial marijuana industry concludes that the market shift toward vape pens in recent years has been “a seismic event for cannabis waste,” with packaging from California’s legal market now nearly on par with that of household pharmaceuticals in the state.
But while there’s “a robust infrastructure in place for reverse distribution” of pharmaceuticals, the study notes, “no such infrastructure exists for cannabis waste at large scale.”
The new research, by Oaksterdam University researcher Mitchell Colbert, published this week in the standards organization ATSM International’s Journal of Testing and Evaluation, also highlights how state cannabis regulations contribute to excessive cannabis waste that doesn’t exist for other industries.
The paper describes itself as “a novel attempt to estimate the volume of cannabis consumer packaging waste produced in California each year…and compare it with other household hazardous waste (HHW).”
It notes that while California regulators collected waste data through the state’s track-and-trace program, that information “is not publicly available even with a state Public Records Act request to the [Department of Cannabis Control].” Instead the study looked at a sample of cannabis packaging of 256 California cannabis products from 138 manufacturers, combining those findings with sales data on the number of product units sold.
Hellbound and Down 