I recently wrote about the various kinds of environmental regulatory issues DMGS anticipates will emerge in New Jersey’s Cannabis industry. Cannabis cultivators generate significant amounts of organic and inorganic waste that includes plant waste, growing media, and other agricultural material including hazardous wastes in the form of volatile organic compounds.
50/50 Plant Waste Rule
Presently states with recreational cannabis cultivation generally mandate that plant waste must be made unusable and unrecognizable, and then disposed of as solid waste. This is the so called “50/50 rule”. Each cannabis waste generator must take the resulting mash and mix it with other solid waste such that each generator’s solid waste consists of no more than fifty percent cannabis waste. On its face, such a rule seems sensible. But critics point out that the 50/50 rule is flawed in that it forces organic wastes – that could otherwise be put to beneficial reuse – to be landfilled;
itself a negative environmental impact. Critics have also suggested that the 50/50 rule is transportation-centric, relying heavily on carbon-emitting waste disposal infrastructure and that the rule encourages cannabis businesses to produce unnecessary levels of non-cannabis solid waste in order to meet the fifty- percent threshold.
Composting and Anaerobic Digestion
Although less common than the 50/50 rule, states have been coming round to the idea of allowing businesses to dispose of marijuana plant waste outside of the solid waste stream. Massachusetts, for example, permits the disposal of marijuana plant waste by mixing it with other organic matter, such as food waste, soil, mulch, manure, and growing media, and to then disposal of that waste at offsite composting or anaerobic digesting facilities. Advocates for such methods point out that
composting or anaerobic digestion of cannabis plant matter would result in a complete diversion from landfilling the waste and ensure that the plant matter can be put to beneficial reuse.
Composting and anaerobic digestion may be a workable option for New Jersey. New Jersey and New York recently passed food waste recycling acts that will require certain businesses to dispose of food waste through authorized recycling facilities, which in both states, include off-site composting and/or anaerobic digestion. Permitting cannabis-waste generators to dispose of their plant waste in
the same manner as food waste – and perhaps mixed with food waste, if necessary – would seemingly promote each state’s
environmental policy goals underlying their respective food waste acts and provide cannabis-waste generators with an environmentally sound means to dispose of their plant matter.
New Jersey is likely a long way away from fully implementing a system to handle marijuana plant waste, but as new developments arise, DMGS will
keep you advised.
Martin Milita 