There is more to smoking cannabis than general smell and potency. What makes some cannabis different than others is how it’s grown, and how the growing strategies affects the overall quality of the medicine. When it comes to putting something inside of your body, it’s important that you’re choosing products that are good for your health. In this panel, we will take a deep dive into the variables that define quality cannabis and effective medicine.

Social equity programs in the cannabis industry have become a business imperative. This panel will discuss how several different operators approach the issue in their organizations.

We will explore the challenges and promises of upcycling cannabis waste into sustainable products.

Investors, employees, and customers are looking to companies up their game regarding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) practices. This multi-stakeholder approach to capitalism is growing across industries.  Hear from a panel of experts who are advocating for more cannabis companies to drive innovation in this space.

California is proposing to begin eliminating HPS from indoor cultivation environments as of Jan. 2023. But who exactly would the law apply to? How can cultivators take advantage? What can cannabis learn from other mature, energy-intensive industries?

Social equity programs in the cannabis industry have become a business imperative. This panel will discuss how several different operators approach the issue in their organizations.

Plastic waste and pollution have become a major problem for our world. With plastic recycling maxing out at only 9% and major companies closing their recycling plants across the country, we clearly need to do something different. This starts with eliminating single use plastic, which has been done already in several different business sectors. From cutlery and straws to take out boxes and plastic bag bans - we need to stop talking about recycling, and start implementing it. This panel will feature both brands and packaging companies as they discuss the current options and challenges with sustainable packaging.

It’s no secret...producing cannabis doesn’t come without a strain on the environment. As more states move towards legalization, the industry faces growing pressure to become more sustainable. With stringent regulations and operational codes looming over daily operations, are there sustainable solutions that cannabis companies can adopt? Get a behind-the-scenes peek at real-world hurdles and hear about progress underway to bring more sustainable business practices to the cannabis industry.

An open conversation exploring the fundamental injustice of individuals, particularly people of color, who experienced firsthand the devastating and unjust impact of the criminilization of cannabis, specifically, incarceration for cannabis offenses. These experiences will be juxtaposed with the rising tide of legalization and the burgeoning cannabis industry. The panel will then explore how the legal cannabis industry can work together to help repair these injustices with direct, tangible actions.

In 2014, changes in US laws opened the door for research and development of industrial hemp, and within a few years, many states had launched pilot programs. Those were followed by the 2018 Farm Bill which relabeled hemp an agricultural product and not a controlled substance. The new label was all industry leaders needed to start building a domestic supply chain for the natural fiber. The discussion will highlight the current status of hemp in the US, its future outlook, and a call for collaboration in building a domestic sustainable supply chain.

The use of cannabis as a medicine is here to stay. Both its safety and efficacy have been well established through much anecdotal and clinical experience. This panel will review the current fields of study on cannabis medicine and reveal what the future has in store

From LATAM to Europe to Asia and the South Pacific, investors and operators share how the cannabis industry is growing globally and the challenges and opportunities adopting sustainable practices.

While there is no universally accepted standard for regenerative agriculture, companies ranging from Cargill to Patagonia are touting commitments to regenerative production. Philosophically, regenerative agriculture improves soil health, rather than just maintaining it, so can be thought of as a bar above sustainable. Regenerative agricultural practices include cover cropping, intensifying and lengthening crop rotations, and reducing tillage. These practices generally function to build up soil by 1) increasing the amount of living plant cover and photosynthesis (atmospheric carbon capture) and 2) decreasing soil disturbance which increases soil carbon loss via microbial respiration. These practices can help improve the carbon balance of row crop agriculture, relative to the prevailing systems where one-or two-crop grain systems dominate and cover crop adoption, while increasing, is still quite limited (less than 5% of cropland acres nationally). Building soil health isn't just about carbon though, ancillary benefits include improving crop resilience to drought, extreme rainfall, and mitigating pest pressure, in some cases. Together this approach to growing holds much promise for cannabis and other crop producers interested in nurturing a more resilient production system for plants, people, and the planet. 

Learn about the various techniques for applying, storing, treating, recirculating and discharging water in today's dynamic market. How do climate, building type, dehumidification strategies, substrates and other factors impact how much a cultivation environment consumes? And how can we move toward best practices together?

The marijuana industry has air quality impacts beyond just nuisance odors. Recent studies have found that cannabis plants emit gas phase terpenes. Terpenes are a type of Volatile Organic Compound (VOC). The industry also uses solvents for extracting concentrates that result in VOC emissions. These types of VOCs chemically react with nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions in the presence of sunlight to form ground level ozone. Ozone is an air pollutant that is harmful to human health and negatively impacts the environment. With the rapid growth of the marijuana industry, due to the legalization of cultivation and manufacturing, there is now an unknown industrial scale area source of VOCs that can impact ozone formation. This is especially important in VOC-limited areas, such as urban areas with high concentrations of nitrogen oxides, where increases in VOCs can have a significant impact on ozone production.  The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has conducted research to quantify the unknown rate of VOC emissions from industrial scale cannabis cultivation and model the resulting impacts on local ozone formation in Colorado.

Separately, the marijuana industry routinely releases carbon dioxide, purchased as a byproduct of power generation, into the indoor cultivation environment to stimulate accelerated plant growth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. CDPHE participated in an innovative pilot project to capture waste carbon dioxide emissions from local breweries with new equipment, purify it, and recycle it during the cannabis cultivation process. 

Throughout the fermentation process breweries emit carbon dioxide at a much higher quantity than is used to carbonate beer and pressurize lines throughout the facility. Typical practice is for breweries to vent all carbon dioxide from the fermentation process and purchase carbon dioxide from an outside supplier. This small scale carbon capture demonstration pilot between breweries and a cannabis cultivation was to demonstrate the ability to capture the carbon dioxide waste stream and reuse it as an input to the marijuana growing process, therefore reducing carbon dioxide emissions in Colorado. 

The Emerald Triangle is home to the original US cannabis sungrown farmers. What started as an underground industry has grown into a challenging regulated market in California. We will hear from various multigenerational and sungrown farmers from this region, as they share their stories of how the shift to legal markets have affected their realities.

Discussion on the positive business benefits of sustainability and circular product design. This panel willl share case studies and specific examples of business value realized by small and large companies through the implementation of strategies focused on: material health and safety, design for the circular economy, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship, permaculture and social equity.

Design Charrettes have been a common practice among Architects and Planners for decades. Over that time, design professionals have used the practice that can be described as “formalized brainstorming” to incorporate early design ideas from all stakeholders. This traditional process establishes an early-stage creative environment to identify and incorporate principles for successful building design and operation. Only in the last 20 years has this process been expanded to include multi-disciplinary principles related to a project’s sustainability. This presentation presents an argument that supports the idea of whole building design charettes, emphasizing the benefits of this process in the context of sustainability and the “triple bottom line,” as it applies to the cannabis industry.

It's not often that an entirely new legal industry springs up practically overnight after having been mostly illegal for decades. Unlike most emerging industries, cannabis already has a long-established consumer base for both recreational and medical uses, raising the question of how fast and how big the industry will grow, and what ethics will emerge from the start. There are also significant sustainability risks in the cannabis industry that potentially threaten its success. Investors should consider these risks as they evaluate their investments. This panel will review some of these risks, and discuss how investors can leverage their financial power to push to cannabis industry towards a more sustainable future.