The Sustainable Cannabis Coalition (SCC) has been created by a diverse group of cannabis cultivation, manufacturing, and technology experts. The SCC said it will work proactively with industry cultivation and manufacturing peers and vendors to promote proven sustainability best practices that can be implemented at scale across the cannabis market.

“With investors across the industry incorporating Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”) factors into the investment process, the creation of a coalition to address sustainability in this space is critical,” said Peter Dougherty, CEO of Gro IQ and SCC Co-Founder. “The SCC is uniquely poised to impact the industry as it continues to rapidly evolve. As leaders in this space, it is our responsibility to provide data driven sustainability guidance to the industry while protecting both consumers and the environment.”

The SCC founders include CohnReznick, Anderson Porter Design, Valiant, Wholly H2O, Cloud Farming, Argus Controls, Conviron, Gro iQ, Trulieve, Byers Scientific, 365 Cannabis, GMP Collective, Omega Equipment and Supply, Simplifya, PathogenDx, Grow Generation (NASDAQ: GRWG) and Outlaw Technology. These industry leaders are experts in data-driven business strategy, facility design, facility construction, water use, pathogen detection, energy consumption, waste disposal, economic and social impact, vertical farming, ERP and seed to sale systems, lighting, air emissions, extraction, packaging and data-driven monitoring and optimization of environmental control systems.

Amy Larsen, Vice President of Marketing & PR at Simplifya wrote on the site blog, “The relationship between cannabis compliance and cannabis sustainability is a double-edged sword. In the interest of protecting consumers from this “dangerous” plant, regulatory bodies have turned cultivating something that literally grows freely like a weed in the sun into an industry carving an incredible environmental impact. Because so few states allow legal outdoor grows, cultivators are weighed down by compliance mandates resulting in significant water usage and massive electricity consumption.

Regulations around single-use, child-proof packaging, combined with mandatory dispensary exit bags results in literal tons of packaging waste, much of which is non-recyclable. In some cases, requirements around cannabis waste disposal demand that extractors make their cannabis waste and extraction byproducts “unusable” by mixing them with products like cat litter or bleach so they are impossible to consume…which ultimately results in doubling the amount of non-compostable waste headed to landfills.”

The SCC said it plans to release informative blog posts and podcast interviews bi-weekly addressing each vertical segment of the cannabis cultivation and manufacturing supply chain within the industry along with best practices for sustainability.