Table of Contents

• Why We Need Alternatives To Fossil Fuel-Based Plastic
• Hemp Cellulose Fibers A Good Source For Plastic
• The Pros & Limitations of Bioplastic
• The Biggest Barrier To Hemp Plastic
• Where to Buy Hemp Plastic

You may have heard that agricultural hemp, the non-mind-altering cousin of cannabis (commonly known as marijuana), has dozens of potential uses from clothing to paper.

Since virtually all climate scientists agree that we must replace our dependence on fossil fuels, and given that hemp can even make the soil cleaner, it’s surprising that this miracle crop isn’t in wider use.

When we looked into the topic, we found that hemp is already appearing in some commonplace objects, including cars, and could soon find its way into more. But there are also remaining barriers that keep hemp plastics more expensive and less versatile, for now.

Keep reading to learn more about the future of hemp plastic, or scroll to the bottom to find companies making hemp plastic today.

Alternatives Needed As Plastic Pollutes Water & Land

Researchers found 38 million pieces of plastic waste on one uninhabited island in the South Pacific. That’s just one island.

Not only are the harmful effects of global warming increasingly clear, conventional plastics linger in the environment and can even enter the food chain to detrimental effect on human and animal health.

In one especially shocking recent example, researchers from the University of Tasmania and the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds found 38 million pieces of plastic waste on Henderson Island, an uninhabited coral island in the South Pacific.

Jennifer Lavers, a marine scientist from the University of Tasmania, told The Guardian that evidence of human activity litters the beaches of some of the most far-flung islands in the world, regardless of the year, location, or area of the ocean.Topic

As much as 1.9 million of these tiny particles per square mile, according to a 2014 report from National Geographic, compose the infamous “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.””

Hemp Cellulose Fibers A Good Source For Many Plastics

Some of the earliest plastics were made from cellulose fibers obtained from organic, non-petroleum-based sources.

Seshata, a writer at Sensi Seeds in 2014, reported that hemp cellulose, which contains around 65-70% cellulose, can extract and use to make cellophane, rayon, celluloid, and a range of related plastics. Hemp is a good source of cellulose with particular promise due to its relative sustainability and low environmental impact when compared to wood (which contains around 40%), flax (which contains 65-75%), and cotton (which contains up to 90%).

While 100% hemp-based plastic is still a rarity, some “composite bioplastics” — plastics made from a combination of hemp and other plant sources — are already in use. Thanks to their high strength and rigidity, these plastics are currently used in the construction of cars, boats, and even musical instruments.

Bioplastic Is Promising, But Can’t Solve All Our Pollution Problems

Many plastic products are made from polymer resins, including polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, found in everyday products like plastic bottles. While advocates hope to someday see 100% hemp-based plastic bottles on supermarket shelves, the technology just isn’t ready for prime time.

Coca-Cola and other companies have experimented with 100% plant-based bottles, but they currently produce commercially available products using no more than 30% plant-based materials, while using traditional fossil fuel sources for the remaining portion.

The good news is that many corporations are investing heavily in researching replacements to traditional PET. It’s likely the first company to produce a viable commercial product could stand to earn millions.

Unfortunately, even plastic that’s deliberately designed to be biodegradable can still be a source of pollution. Almost nothing biodegrades in a landfill, and hemp microplastics could still cause problems when introduced to the oceans. Biodegradable plastics need to be sent to commercial composting facilities for efficient disposal, and these facilities aren’t available to everyone. In addition to creating better alternatives to plastic, we’ll still need to create more responsible attitudes toward disposable products.

Cost And The War On Drugs Are Biggest Barrier To Hemp Plastic

While fossil fuel costs are kept low with subsidies, hemp products for the most part remain costly luxury items. The U.S. legalized hemp in 2018, after a few years of research into hemp growing. However, decades of drug prohibition mean we’re still lacking much of the infrastructure needed to grow and process hemp into plastic.

Though hemp requires fewer pesticides and has a smaller environmental footprint than many other crops, growing and harvesting it remains labor intensive. Another drawback is that hemp requires “significant fertiliser in some soils, and also has relatively high water requirements,” as noted by Seshata.

However, hemp prices will undoubtedly come down, and technology improve as hemp growing spreads from coast to coast.

Currently, farmers in the United States are growing hemp mostly for CBD, but they are starting to experiment with other varieties that are easier to harvest for their fiber content.

Will we someday use hemp LEGOs? (It’s probably just hype)

One of the most provocative examples of hemp’s potential plastic future could come from LEGOs, the ubiquitous building block toy. which is promising to phase out fossil-fuel based resin by 2030.

“Hemp might just be the cost effective, environmentally sustainable alternative material that LEGO is looking for,” speculated Emily Gray Brosious in a February 2016 investigation from the Sun Times. However, there’s no proof that LEGO is currently seriously considering hemp.

Whether or not we’re ever able to build a spaceship from hemp bricks, the full promise of hemp plastic remains tantalizingly close, but just out of reach.

Where to buy hemp plastic?

We recommend the following brands:

• Green Spring Technologies

Green Spring Technologies creates hemp plastics used in several projects, including hemp plastic pens that several politicians have used to sign hemp legalization bills.

• SANA Packaging

SANA Packaging focuses on creating sustainable packaging for the legal cannabis and hemp industries. They’ve created “doob tubes” and other containers made from both hemp and reclaimed ocean plastic.

• PF DesignLab

PF DesignLab are cutting edge researchers creating plastic and other composite materials from hemp and other plants. Their 3D-printed hemp bicycle frame, an experimental creation showcased at the NoCo Hemp Expo in 2019, amazed us.

• ExHemplary Life (Hemp pastic drinking straws)

Plastic straws made from hemp and two other plant-based materials. These hemp drinking straws feel identical to regular straws, but they start to biodegrade in 120 days. A great example of a hemp solution to an everyday need. These straws are safer than many other replacements to common straws.

The post Hemp Makes Great Plastic, So Why Isn’t Hemp Plastic Everywhere? appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In episode 66 of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, our host Matt has a conversation with Ron Vasak-Smith, CEO, and James Eichner, Co-Founder and CSO, of Sana Packaging.

Ron and James met in grad school where they worked on a project together that would turn into a career running a hemp packaging company. The two cofounded Sana Packaging. Today, they work with more than 300 vendors using both hemp plastic and reclaimed ocean plastic as packaging for cannabis and hemp brands.

We’ve visited with Sana Packaging before, including a discussion about sustainable hemp plastic and paper packaging at NoCo Hemp Expo in 2018.

Matt also mentions our 2020 CBD and Hemp Gift Guide and our Populum CBD honey review.

You’ve got hemp questions? We’ve got hemp answers!

Send us your hemp questions and you might hear them answered on one of our Hemp Q&A episodes. Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

Subscribe to our show!

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You’ll be the first to hear about everything going on with our special newsletter plus exclusive Patron content including blogs, podcast extras, and more. Visit the Ministry of Hemp on Patreon and become an Insider now!

Hemp Plastic Packaging, With Sana Packaging: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 66 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, “Hemp Plastic Packaging”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum, and this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Matt Baum:
I never went to grad school. I had a lot of friends that did though, and it was a nightmare. It was super difficult, and they were literally living on a shoestring budget while working as hard as they possibly could to hopefully increase their chances of getting a job afterwards. Now imagine that you finished grad school and you had a project you believed in so much that you said, “The easy thing to do would be to go and find a job, but instead we should make a job.” And that is exactly what my guests, Ron Vasak-Smith and James Eichner did. Ron is the CEO and James is the CSO of Sana Packaging. Sana Packaging is an up-and-coming hemp plastic packaging company. They had an idea in grad school and it was centered around cannabis packaging, and the question, why is it all in single-use plastic?

Matt Baum:
There’s plenty of industries out there that are trying to be more environmentally friendly, but it seems like the cannabis industry is intensely aware of their impact on the environment and what they can do to lessen that impact. When these two grad students started approaching smoke shops in their area saying, “Hey, instead of putting everything in plastic, what if we put it in hemp plastic? Or what if we put it in reclaimed plastic?” And they built a customer base, and now they’ve got a successful business. I had a fantastic conversation with these guys that I think you’re really going to enjoy. I know we’ve talked a lot about hemp plastic on the show recently, but this was a chance to talk to two people about how they got a business like this off the ground, and they were completely open and honest and a lot of fun to talk to. This is my conversation with Ron Vasak-Smith and James Eichner of Sana Packaging.

The college origins of Sana Packaging

Matt Baum:
Let’s start at the beginning. You guys met in college.

James Eichner:
At grad school.

Matt Baum:
Grad school. Okay. You met in grad school. And what were you both going to grad school for at the time?

James Eichner:
We were pursuing our MBAs at CU Boulder.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

James Eichner:
And we were both taking a lot of classes together.

Matt Baum:
And at some point you’re like, “You know what? There’s too much single-use plastic in this world.” How does this come up? How does this even start? It’s the kind of thing where… you both look like ski bums to me, no offense, but I know one of you happen to have been skiing today. How do you get in the idea that not only do I want to work on a project where maybe we incorporate hemp into plastic, but we should start a company too. How does this happen?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah. I mean, honestly I think James and I both say it comes from being disgruntled consumers, right? We are both in Colorado since legalization happened and consuming cannabis and just personal guilt, honestly. If this is something that I’m going to be consuming, and it’s just another area of waste that I think James and I are… We’re both really fortunate to be in the time at school, when we were just able to have the space to start a business, right. And coming out of grad school, it’s either go find a job or start a job. One of the other.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Starting something sounded a little more intriguing, I guess.

Matt Baum:
But this started as like a college project. Is that right, James?

James Eichner:
Yeah. We were in a sustainable venturing class together and we’d taken a bite. We were both focusing our studies on primarily sustainability and entrepreneurship. So we basically ended up in all the same classes together. And this was the first semester of our last year. And Ron approached me and asked if I wanted to work on this project with him. And Ron hit the nail on the head by saying at the time, it was like, “Hey, I know you’re disgruntled about cannabis packaging as well. Do you think this sounds like a fun idea for a class project?” And at the time it was really just an exploration to see what might be out there material-wise, business model-wise, neither of us had a background in packaging or anything like that. It really was, I don’t know, happenstance.

Matt Baum:
That’s my next question. Neither of you have a background in packaging, did either of you have a background in cannabis other than recreational cannabis or?

James Eichner:
Not beyond the level of small-time college slanging eighths for some extra pocket change-

Matt Baum:
Fair enough, fair enough.

James Eichner:
Really beyond that, no experience in the cannabis industry. Formerly, I came from the social and environmental justice sectors before grad school. Ron came from the liquor industry. I think we’re both… They like to say that there’s a few types of MBA students. There’s people who are there to enhance their careers. There’s people who are there to change their careers. And then there’s folks like Ron and I who just really needed some direction. And we both really love being students. And I think we didn’t know each other beforehand, but I think we were just in similar positions of it’s our mid-twenties, we’ve had a few years after college having fun and now we really need to find some meaningful direction. And I think that’s what, ultimately both drew us back to school.

Matt Baum:
What year was this when this project started? Because now from what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen and talked to other people, even in the last five years, there’s been a lot more of the hemp that you would need to make industrial packaging or even rope or cloth and stuff like that. But literally only in the last five years before that it was a complete desert from what I understand. And even now it’s still not real easy. What did it look like when you started and what year was that?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yes, we got started in 2016.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Creating more sustainable packaging for hemp and cannabis

Ron Vasak-Smith:
I remember I went for grad school. Our class advisor was like, “Hey, you need to go to get more involved in something that you’re interested in.” And there was a hemp conference-

Matt Baum:
Like, “What you doing with your life kid, come on.”

Ron Vasak-Smith:
There was a hemp conference up in Loveland and I was like, “Ah, I like hemp that sounds interesting enough to me.”

Matt Baum:
Was that NOCO in Loveland?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
It wasn’t NOCO, it was like a round table and then it was just probably 50 to 70 people, just Governor Polis was there just gives 2016… The hemp stuff was just getting off the ground.

Matt Baum:
Great.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
And I was there and I was looking around and I was just like, “Seems like, I’m in the right place, right time to do something with this stuff it’s happening. Why not be an on the ground level. And it just coincides, it is really useful for a lot of things. And so why not try to make some packaging out of it.”

Matt Baum:
At that time CBD was booming and really starting to take off. Why didn’t you guys try and jump in on that? I’m not trying to dissuade you anyway. I’m just curious and thinking process, because I’ve interviewed so many people that were like, “I was growing hemp. I started making CBD doing the CBD to…. ” Not as many people have decided to go the industrial route. And I’m just curious, why not go into CBD?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
I think for us, it was honestly like if you’re going to start a business, start a business that’s a problem, right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
And not saying that CBD isn’t fixing problems, it is, but for us, this was a problem that we were passionate about. Let the passion drive the ship I think for us in that one, and there’s definitely been times where it’s like, “Oh, CBD seems to be an easier path to profitability than what we have going on.” But the same time I think James probably feels the same way, but we were stoked on what we’re doing.

James Eichner:
Yeah. And I think starting with the initial problem that we set out to explore was why is cannabis packaging and by extension hemp and CBD product packaging, why is it the way it is? Why are people using the materials that they’re using?

Matt Baum:
Yeah. It’s stupid right?

James Eichner:
What’s affecting that. And so we started from the packaging side of things and then got into the hemp side in terms of learning about it as a potential material for packaging, as opposed to coming to the hemp plant and then trying to figure out, okay, well, what do we do with it? We already had that intended use in mind. And luckily it worked out.

Matt Baum:
And James, it didn’t hurt that you came from an environmental law background as well I’m sure.

James Eichner:
No, no, no. Nonprofit. Environmental nonprofit, yeah.

Matt Baum:
So you were making the big bucks in the environmental?

James Eichner:
Yeah. I was really rolling [crosstalk 00:09:46].

Matt Baum:
There you go. All right. It’s all coming together now.

James Eichner:
Still really rolling now.

Sana Packaging’s first hemp plastic packaging prototypes

Matt Baum:
Oh, I can tell. Just by the way, you should see where these guys live. It’s palatial. It’s an audio podcast, so they can’t see it. You do the project, you find out this can work. We can actually make this happen. What happens next? Then you’re just like, screw it, let’s start a company?

James Eichner:
Ron, did we have a 3D printed prototype by the end of that semester, by the class projector?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah. We were doing the New Venture Challenge along with it, right?

James Eichner:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Because there’s some cash prize involved in that. And I think-

James Eichner:
We didn’t wait in back.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
… coinciding with the one class and we had another class project and we were doing in that venture challenge. Just, I mean, like when you’re in school, right? There’s the most resources around you you’re going to have, right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
We were able to rely on people much smarter than us, and had skillsets in areas that we didn’t to help us along. We had a prototype made basically for the class project. Fortunately, a company was making 3D printable hemp plastics.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
To make a hemp prototype packaging product wasn’t too far of a stretch. And I had an idea of what design would have some sort of locking mechanism in it and stuff. And we tried out some stuff. And so at the end of the class we did have a prototype.

Matt Baum:
Tell me about the prototype. What was it?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
It was our first, basically a pretty similar to what our first product is, honestly. I don’t have any right here to show you, but it’s our box that you see on our website basically. And we sat down with a engineering student who knew CAD/CAM and was able to sketch something out that the next step-

Matt Baum:
Right, the math.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
The math [crosstalk 00:11:43].

James Eichner:
Yeah. Shout out to a Swapneil Kumar for being our first product designer.

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome. You said you used a 3D printer, so you’re using these are the ones that use the hemp plastic that also has regular plastic in it as well, right?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yes. And it’s actually a really similar formulation to what we’re using currently because PLA, which is the plant-based polymer typically comes from corn or sugarcane feed stock.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Has a lower melting temperature than a traditional petroleum-based plastic. And so with that lower melting temp, it’s a hemp and corn-based composite basically.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
So it really similar to what we use now. And that was the, “Hey, this is a step in that direction. Our products we want to make them a hundred percent plant-based.” And so this was a pathway towards that.

Matt Baum:
That’s one of the things I’ve talked to some people about hemp plastics about. The PLAs especially while they do break down better, they can leave microplastics and stuff like that. You’ve moved now to a full plant-based, is that correct?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah. It’s a biocomposite 30% hemp, 30% PLA. Still dealing with that issue with any polymer is going to leave behind microplastics. It just matters what happens to it, how they’re digested, where they’re digested. And we as a company coming a long way from four years ago, James and I have learned so much about the actual systems within the waste space. And so what actually happens to a product afterwards is the stuff that we would like to see more focus on.

Matt Baum:
Right. It compostable what you’re dealing with?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Not certified compostable, we use compostable inputs, but due to the wall thickness of our product, we don’t actually meet the breakdown timeframe-

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
… which is 90 days for that. And so this is basically our first product to market and we know that there’s so much more that we can do moving forward. And so that’s just what we’re currently working on that [inaudible 00:13:59].

Getting started in hemp plastic packaging

Matt Baum:
Let’s talk about your current product. James, tell me about what you guys have going on right now?

James Eichner:
We went to CanopyBoulder, an accelerator in Boulder.

Matt Baum:
Okay.

James Eichner:
And that’s how we got our first bit of funding. And Ron put in some of his personal money as well. And that’s what got us off to the races. And we Sana Packaging became a full-time endeavor for us. Really the second we finished school and the accelerator in the span of the same week, I think. And had a little bit of money in the bank for the company. And just like how the class project went well, so we decided to apply to an accelerator.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

James Eichner:
Accelerator went well, so we decided to continue with the project after the accelerator and things kept slowly falling into place, but it took us about a full year after we finished the accelerator to get our first real working prototypes, not just done, but child-resistant certified and then building out a production scale mold. And then we launched a pilot program in the summer of 2018 with around 20 pilot customers and went through a six months learning period with them because beyond just making a product, a big part of packaging is the customer service that you’re providing to folks.

Matt Baum:
Oh yeah.

James Eichner:
Learning the ins and outs of how to communicate with our manufacturing partners, our supplier partners, how to communicate with our customers, how to make sure that things show up on time. All that behind the scenes operational stuff was hammered out in this six month customer-learning period, along with just ramping up our production and making sure that we can truly start mass producing something made out of a hemp biocomposite. And that was in 2019, beginning of 2019 that we really opened our doors up for sales. And now we’re up to… Started 2019 with two products and 20 customers now coming to the end of 2020, we’re up to seven products. One which we just launched earlier this week, soon to be eight, we’re going to launch our eighth product just before the end of the year. And we’re up to a little over 370 customers now and so it’s-

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

James Eichner:
… crazy how far we’ve come.

Matt Baum:
You guys, rather than the other posh mucks that had to get out of grad school and go find work, you’re like, “Let’s just make a job. We’ll make our damn own job.” Which is harder, sure. But you did it. Tell me about your first customers. I’m sorry. Tell me your first customers, like the people when you came out, like those first 20 people, what did you guys do? Did you just like show up places and be like, “See this box, this box is made of hemp, it’s not cardboard, it’s not plastic.” What was that like? Who were they?

James Eichner:
It was a lot of door-to-door.

Matt Baum:
Really? Literally like, “Hello, my name is Ron and I’m James. And we’re here to talk to you about Sana Packaging.”

Ron Vasak-Smith:
When we look back on it now it is like, no. I would say it’d be very difficult to do what we did in any other industry, right? Like the cannabis industry just getting going. And you could just walk into a dispensary and be like, “Hey, hemp. We’re making hemp packaging.” Right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
And then the people were like, it would get like an eye raise and maybe interest in it. We didn’t have the product to sell at the time. It was very much like when you’re going through the startup phase, you’re fundraising, you’re trying to basically convince customers, but then you’re trying to convince investors and such that someone’s going to actually buy this product, right?

Matt Baum:
Right. But you’re not just convincing them that like, “Hey, you should buy this product.” You’re also having to convince them, like, “You should spend a little more money on your packaging for a more responsible product.” Right?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s the tough thing, right to go into a business and tell them, “Hey, you need to spend more money on product that… ” It’s a tough conversation. And I think that was for us at the beginning, we really had to have that passion. Just button up the shirt and go and knock on as many doors as possible and be like, “Hey, is this interesting to you? Would you buy this?”

Matt Baum:
And again it probably wouldn’t work in any other industry. It’s not like you can walk into Ford and be like, “Hey, instead of using all that plastic in your car… ” For the cannabis industry, I can see them being like, “Wait a minute. Why are we putting this stuff in plastic or cardboard or a garbage.” When you’re supposed to be a little more ecologically friendly. I would guess in that industry.

James Eichner:
We really owe so much to those early pilot customers. Because when we first approached all of them, it was similar. We were approaching investors, we were approaching potential customers. And with everyone, it was selling them on a hope and a dream. With investors it was, if you give us money, we will make this and we’re confident that we’ll be able to sell it for this amount. And it will be a good use of your money to invest at us, who by the way have never done anything.

Matt Baum:
Two grad students with a dream.

James Eichner:
And then with these potential customers, it was approaching folks and saying, “Here’s a prototype. If we’re able to mass produce this four to six months from now, will you commit to being a pilot customer with us?” And again, selling someone on a hope and a dream and something that doesn’t physically exist yet. And as you’re trying to connect to the dots of getting money in, investors want to see that you have potential customers lined up, potential customers want to see that you actually have a product to sell. And so you’re trying to line up all of these things. And I’m trying to think of who some of those early customers are. I know there’s-

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Shout out to Smokey’s 420 in Fort Collins. They were our first, first customer.

Matt Baum:
Nice.

James Eichner:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
So they’ll still have that first check.

Investing in hemp plastic packaging

Matt Baum:
It’s one thing to walk into Smokey’s in Fort Collins and be like, “Hey bros, we should all be nicer to the earth, right.” And they’re like, “Yeah, bro.” And you’re like, “Well, check this out.” What were the investors like? That’s got to be a whole different shebang there. I mean, when you start talking to money guys, what were they like? Who were your first investors? I mean, I know Ron, you had to throw some of your money in there. I hope you got it back. It seems like you probably did it by this point.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
We’re working on that.

James Eichner:
We’re working on it.

Matt Baum:
What was it like approaching investors with this idea?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
I think first being able to go… James and I as being two guys leaving grad school who hadn’t done this before, being able to go into business accelerator like CanopyBoulder was focused in the cannabis industry and had the framework set up for us as far as this is how you will approach, this is how you could approach these people. And so I think that was super useful for us. But I mean, I think James and I would just… It’s one of those things you got to learn on the fly, right?

Matt Baum:
Sure, sure.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
You just put yourself out there, right? You don’t know how you’re going to be received by these people. There’s a lot of perceived, critiquing going on around your business model, how you’re presenting it. Early on a lot of unsolicited advice that you just got to-

Matt Baum:
I’m sure.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
… take it in and be-

Matt Baum:
You can’t wear that. You’re going to wear some money dress like that.

James Eichner:
Ron’s name was actually changed from Ronnie to Ron by potential investors.

Matt Baum:
Oh, I totally believe it.

James Eichner:
When I met Ron, he went by Ronnie. And he’s gone by Ronnie, his whole life, so a friend calls him Ronnie, his friends call him Ronnie. And we just started interacting with these potential investors. And they skew male.

Matt Baum:
No.

James Eichner:
They skew a little older.

Matt Baum:
No. You’re kidding me. Let me guess a little white too, I would guess.

James Eichner:
Yeah. Pretty pasty like what you’ve just seen here.

Matt Baum:
Okay. I think I know what you’re talking about now.

James Eichner:
Yeah. And literally overnight, Ronnie became Ron because he just introduced himself, “Hi, my name’s Ronnie.” And they’d be like, “Nice to meet you, Ron.”

Matt Baum:
Yeah. That’s a kid’s name. I’m not going to call you that. All right. Anyway, where were we?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah, exactly what I heard that’s a child’s name, so you get that enough times you’re like, “Oh, we’re trying to make good money here.”

Matt Baum:
Right.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Changed the name to see if that works too.

James Eichner:
Just about investors again, real quick though, it’s similar to those early customers where you get really lucky and you find these handful of people that believe in what you’re doing. Like Smokey’s 420 in Fort Collins or Bailey and Murphy in Oregon, they were another early one. We had a few early investors as well. I don’t want to name names, but there’s one individual who he’s placed capital with us a few times in a few different seed rounds that we’ve done. And not huge sums but he’s been the first money in on each of those rounds and-

Matt Baum:
That counts [inaudible 00:23:53].

James Eichner:
… if you’ve ever fund raised before that first money in is the hardest, because no one wants to be the first.

Matt Baum:
Everybody is waiting to see if someone is going to throw money [crosstalk 00:24:02].

James Eichner:
Everyone’s looking for people around them to be like, “Hey, this is a good idea. We’re all doing this.”

Matt Baum:
Right.

James Eichner:
That first person’s really taken a big leap and this person did that for us twice. And it’s not the most money we’ve ever gotten, but it’s some of the most important money we’ve ever gotten.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, I would argue it counts way more. Just because someone else sees, “Oh, I’m not the only idiot that’s going to throw money at this. Someone else did it for us. So. Okay.”

Ron Vasak-Smith:
And even more than that, like the confidence boost that it gives you.

Matt Baum:
Totally.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
From a fundraising standpoint, right?

Matt Baum:
Totally.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
It’s like when you go fishing, right? You might not know there’s any fish in there, so you’re just like, “Let the second get a bite.” You’re like, “All right, first this is worthwhile, right? We got a chance here.”

Matt Baum:
Back to where we were saying about going in and talking to these investors, you guys had never done it before, so you don’t know the wrong way to do it, let alone the right way. Let’s just do it, right?

James Eichner:
Yeah.

Growing Sana Packaging

Matt Baum:
That’s great. You go from 20 customers to 300 customers, you said you just unveiled a new product last week. What was that?

James Eichner:
That was a V2 or I don’t know if V2 is the right word, but it’s a second iteration of our reclaimed ocean plastic pre-roll tube. The first iteration that we did was in the same production scale mold as our hemp biocomposite pre-roll tube. We knew when we launched the… Because using the same mold for both products was an easy way to have a new product, use a new material, get something else to market. But we knew from the get-go that down the road, we would be able to lighten the amount of material used just because the wall thicknesses are a little thicker than necessary for the reclaimed ocean plastic material, because they were designed to run this biocomposite.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

James Eichner:
This has been a long time coming for us and we’re really excited about this product. It’s our first pop-top design. Our previous products had… They were two piece molds, meaning that the lid of the pre-roll tube is a whole separate piece.

Matt Baum:
[crosstalk 00:26:24].

James Eichner:
And again that original design was made to work with the hemp biocomposite. Now we’ve moved over to a pop-top for the reclaimed ocean plastic. We’re able to reduce our material use by 25% while also increasing the length of the pre-roll tube from 110 millimeters to 116 millimeters. And also moving into a larger production scale mold. All of that combined also allowed us to drop our price by 30% compared to our previous reclaimed ocean plastic pre-roll tube. It’s a huge step forward for us. And we hope it’ll be a real game changer just because it’s a really common form factor. And because it’s that much more price competitive, we really hope that it’s a no-brainer for folks that perhaps earlier were a little scared off by the inevitable price premium that comes with sustainability.

Matt Baum:
Potentially stupid question, where does one go to pick up ocean-reclaimed plastic? I mean, coming from Nebraska, I would know where to start, but are you hooked up with a group that is literally pulling plastic out of the ocean? Or are there suppliers? I have no clue how this works.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
We’re working with a network called Oceanworks and they basically have network of processor, cleaners, and sorters that they work with to go out and certify this material. Ocean plastic, like any other products, recycled product, there’s the varying levels and degrees of the quality, types and all of that.

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Beyond just saying, it’s ocean plastic there’s certain grades of material that we need, certain type of material. We have some needs around cleanliness, so FDA approved material.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
And so making sure that that is all up to snuff and basically that our manufacturers are getting what we say it is, and the customer is getting what we say it is. And just a way that we can ensure the quality of the product.

Matt Baum:
And I assume it’s just very similar to recycling plastic more or less. You’re melting it down, you’re pouring it into your mold and it cools and I mean, is it more or less work than just bringing in new plastic?

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Yeah. I think not necessarily more or less work, from a theoretic level you’re correct, right? Materials being extruded into a mold.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
But the biggest problem is the quality of the material, right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
If with virgin material designed to perform a very specific way, if the recycled content or reclaim content has any variability in it, that variability might show up in the part.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
This is one of the big reasons why you don’t see a lot of recycled and reclaimed material used amongst major consumer products because in the traditional world where price is everything, if you’re going to get let’s just say two out of every 1000 units have a blemish or something, right?

Matt Baum:
Right.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
That might be enough to tip the scale, to say, “Let’s work with virgin material that oftentimes it’s going to be less expensive.”

Matt Baum:
Yeah. That’s the nightmare of recycling, right? Because my wife and I recycle, my neighbors all recycle, and we’re sending all this plastic to be recycled and you don’t have major plastic corporations using recycled plastics for just that reason.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
I mean, this is the big thing with it, right? If we’re going to recycle, we have to close that loop the best we can. The backend of that is that companies are going to be working with this material. They’re going to pay more for it. They’re going to deal with the inconsistencies that could show up. But that’s what we’re doing as a company, right? Like this idea of producer responsibility versus consumer responsibility, right?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Ron Vasak-Smith:
Both of those have to work together. The consumer has to recycle the producer has to work with the material that has been recycled.

Matt Baum:
Well, and let’s be real. I’m not going to go to the grocery store to pick up my detergent or something and be like, “Oh, well that, bottle’s not as orange as I remember. I think I’ll buy the competition.” No, and nobody cares. It’s preposterous. But we got off subject a little bit there. I think it’s amazing what you’re doing. Don’t get me wrong, but what is next for Sana Packaging? Where do we go from here? I mean, you don’t have to divulge secrets or anything, but-

Ron Vasak-Smith:
The big trade secrets [crosstalk 00:31:04].

Matt Baum:
… if you want to break some news.

James Eichner:
I’d say we’ve always been mission driven, but when we started the company, we were very focused on trying to tap into innovative material types and more sustainable material types. But the big thing that we’ve learned over the last, what is it? Four years, three or four years, is that materials and material innovation are really just one piece of the puzzle.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

James Eichner:
In terms of where Sana Packaging is going, we ultimately view ourselves as material agnostic, meaning we always want to be able to tap into what we believe to be the most sustainable and best material available for the use cases that we’re trying to use it for. And the other big piece of the puzzle is our waste management infrastructure and not just waste management infrastructure, but all the other infrastructure around packaging and in our case specifically cannabis packaging. When we think of what’s next for us, it’s how do we affect that larger systemic change that needs to happen within the cannabis industry and the waste management infrastructure that aids the cannabis industry. And how do we change? How do we shift cannabis packaging from a linear economic model where it goes, take, make, dispose to a circular economic model where at the end of a product’s useful life, you’re recovering it as much as possible, reusing materials as much as possible, regenerating natural systems.

Matt Baum:
Right.

James Eichner:
And that’s what’s next is how to figure out how to make truly circular cannabis packaging. Because every step of the way we’re making incremental change towards it and moving toward circularity. But the big question is how are we going to make that ultimate leap and put those pieces into place and leverage our position in the industry to try and make that happen.

Matt Baum:
And once you build that model, I mean, it’s easy people here will what are they doing in cannabis industry, whatever. But once you build that model and show, you can do it in this industry. There is no reason why you can’t apply that across the board to any industry. There’s no reason why once you get a model like that working, we can’t go into Walmart and buy groceries in a bag made of hemp plastic, or something, or reclaimed plastic, or get your food from McDonald’s in a responsible package. I mean, that’s ultimately where this goes. I’m not saying go shop at Walmart, go shop at McDonald’s, but it’s models like these when you can scale up and change the frigging world. And I think it’s amazing what you guys are doing. Not bad for a couple of stoner bombs from college that came up with a project. Nicely done for a couple of grad students.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
I will have links to Sana Packaging and more about Ron and James in the notes for this episode. Speaking of which here at the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that a more accessible world is a better world for all. So you will find a full written transcript for this episode in the show notes as well.

Matt Baum:
Thanks again for hanging out with me for another episode, I hope you learned something and you might have questions about what you heard or you might have questions about something you heard on another episode, or maybe you just have questions. Call me, let’s talk about it. 402 819-6417 is the number to call and you can leave your message. And we will answer your questions right here on the show. We do Q&A shows where I bring in other people that worked for ministryofhemp.com, my buddy Kit, he’s the editor in chief, Desiree, our videographer, and sometimes Drew our brand manager all show up. It’s a great time. And we love to answer your questions.

Matt Baum:
You can also shoot me an email with an MP3 or just written question to matt@ministryofhemp.com. Speaking of ministryofhemp.com, head over there and check out our review of a CBD honey put out by one of our favorite brands, Populum they were delicious CBD raw honey. We’ve also got your CBD gift guide for Christmas. It’s coming down to the wire. If you’re going shopping, you’re going to want to get it done now. Check out our CBD gift guide. And we have a great guest post about wholesale hemp flour, and about getting into the CBD business, if you’re interested in that.

Matt Baum:
And if you like the content on this show and the stuff that we put up on our site, the best way you can help us is to head to patreon/ministryofhemp and become a Ministry of Hemp Insider. Any amount you give, makes you an insider, gets you access to podcast extras, to early articles and all kinds of extra stuff that we put up on our site and on our show, but more important than that, it helps us to bring hemp education to people that want to hear it and needs to hear it. We’re trying to change the world here folks. We need your help, go to patreon/ministryofhemp become a Ministry of Hemp Insider. That about does it for me, and I like to get out of here the same way every week, by saying, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp Podcast signing off.

The post Hemp Plastic Packaging: The Promise Of Hemp Plastic With Sana Packaging appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Getting back to nature is not just a catchy phrase but our absolute mindset. The inconvenient truth is our planet is drowning in plastic with no signs of slowing down. It is estimated that more than 8 BILLION METRIC TONS of plastic has been created since the early 1950’s. Nearly half of this number was made after the year 2000, according to Roland Geyer at the University of California at Santa Barbara. There is a growing problem with plastic packaging that we can no longer overlook. 

Getting back to nature needs to be more than a catchphrase.

The Absolute Nature team took a hard look in the mirror and decided to act to make more sustainable CBD. Even if what we come up with is small, changes must be made, and any change is better than doing nothing at all.

How were we to even begin? What should we do? Our meetings became less about customer acquisition and marketing strategies and more about how we can clean our own house. We became passionate about doing our best to limit and eventually remove all plastic packaging and non-biodegradable materials, in house.

Our hope in this article is to put aside selfish gains of capitalizing on a new customer base but to do our part in waking up the community. Our goal is to set up a viable path that will educate and inspire others to help cut down plastic waste within our own industry and within their own lives. We believe a sustainable CBD industry is a real possibility, if we act collectively.

Plastic pollution: A reason for action

Plastics have played a dominating role in the packaging of goods. Everything from what we eat to what we use to entertain ourselves with is built from and or coated in plastics. Plastics offer an easily sourced and low-cost solution to packaging needs that most businesses see as their only option. Plastic can be molded and colored to fit any companies branding. Low cost, easy to store, and safe to use for the most part. 

Unfortunately, plastics also have a side to them that is not as flattering. One-time use plastic packaging adds up in time with just the amount made for one person. Now multiple that on a scale of billions over 50 years and it won’t be hard to imagine the problems our grandchildren will inherit.

This is a fast-moving train that shows no signs of slowing down. 8 Billion Metric tons is hard to even comprehend, much less know where to even begin in tackling this issue. We asked Ministry of Hemp to help raise awareness of this issue and do what we can to help get this message out. 

Where to start? 

It starts with just a single step in the right direction and staying committed and disciplined to see it through. There are so many places to start and work on.

Don’t stress yourself out hitting all the points at once. Creating sustainable CBD is a process that will eat a lot of resources to achieve. Start where you can and build upon that. It took us almost a year to get here and we are still not finished! 

Sustainable CBD starts with the technology 

Our first change was not even reducing plastics!

We made our first move by cutting down our carbon footprint with the servers we use. Believe it or not, data centers account for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, which is as much as the airline industry! Experts expect data center pollution to grow to 14% of total emissions by 2040.

With this in mind, we hired GreenGeeks for our data center needs. GreenGeeks began in 2008 and, built on a commitment to be the most eco-friendly web hosting company in the world. By 2009, GreenGeeks was recognized by the United States Environmental Agency as a Green Power Partner. GreenGeeks works with environmental foundations to purchase wind energy credits to put back into the grid three times the amount of energy Absolute Nature consumes.

This was just the first step we took in reducing our carbon footprint. 

Making CBD packing & shipping more sustainable

Our next goal was to tackle our packing/shipping procedures. We started with removing bubble wrap and Styrofoam peanuts from our shipping packages. We had to rework and set in place new policies and procedures for our warehouse employees to streamline this new way of packing and shipping product. Though this may seem like a small thing, it’s a lot harder to break old habits and start brand new ones at the drop of a hat.

We really want to praise our hard-working employees to take this change in stride! We replaced the bubble wrap with thick brown packing paper that is neatly rolled and secured shut. Then, we replaced styrofoam peanuts with now bio-degradable pellets. There is an extra cost in doing this that we have to absorb, but we believe it’s worth doing. 

Using glass instead of plastic

The next item we looked at tackling was the plastic bottles we used for our products. Our hemp flower was sold in plastic pop top bottles. We sourced glass jars to replace the plastic pop tops. This was nearly a 70% increase in packaging cost right from the start. But for us, ethics over profits.

We then removed the plastic bottles for our Fruit Chew line to also use glass jars. For pre-rolls, we use glass tubes with cork tops. Our next move is to move our softgels to glass tinted jars next.

Again, starting anywhere is better than not starting at all. We refuse to sit back and do nothing! 

We can work together to make the CBD industry more sustainable

Absolute Nature is committed to not only offer the best CBD products on the market but do it in a responsible and respectful way to the environment.

We look forward to a time in the future where our tiny ripple in the market changes to a tidal wave of change. If the hemp community works together, we can tackle sustainability head-on. We believe if we can put aside our difference and work together towards a common goal, we can achieve anything.

Try Absolute Nature CBD: Whether you’re part of a CBD brand or just an everyday hemp consumer, we hope you’ll give Absolute Nature a try! Use coupon code Ministry to get 40% off your order!

The post Sustainable CBD Packaging: Getting Back To Nature appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

First on episode 23 of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, our host Matt answers some unanswered questions from last week’s hemp questions podcast. Our discussion of hemp plastic left some issues unaddressed. Matt mentions our friends at Sana Packaging again in this episode. They create sustainable plastic packaging from hemp and reclaimed ocean plastic:

Then, Matt sits down with the cofounder of We Are For Better Alternatives (WAFBA), Morris Beegle to discuss how hemp can replace many industrial materials and pollutants. Beegle is an expert on hemp sustainability, and a pioneer in the industry: from hemp guitars and clothing to organizing important events like NoCo Hemp Expo, he seems to show up everywhere. Even our hemp paper business cards are printed by Tree Free Hemp, another of Beegle’s efforts. We’re excited to share his knowledge with you in this episode.

Sponsored by LifePatent

Thanks to our friends at LifePatent, one of our Top CBD Brands, for sponsoring this episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. Check out their site now to try free samples of their great sleep capsules.

We’re also big fans of their CBD-A tincture, which we reviewed last year. Our editor Kit still frequently reaches for this product for help with his chronic pain.

Send us your feedback!

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows like this one! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com.

An interview with Morris Beegle: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete written transcript for this episode:

Matt Baum: 00:00 The Ministry of Hemp Podcast is brought to you by LifePatent, purveyors of high quality CBD products that just happened to be one of our favorite brands too. They care very deeply about their customers because when it comes down to it, LifePatent understands their customers are people, seeking relief. You can learn more about the entire line of CBD related products at lifepatent.com.

Welcome back to another episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. My name is Matt Baum, and I am your host. Today on the show, we are going to talk about some industrial uses for hemp with a guy named Morris Beegle. Morris is an amazing guy. He’s the co-founder and president of We Need A Better Alternative, and what they do is just that, look for alternatives to plastics, petroleums and other wasteful construction and industrial materials that could be a lot more renewable. It just so happens that hemp is not only a great alternative, it is a highly versatile one too, but before we get into that, I wanted to touch on something from last week’s show.

Unanswered questions about hemp plastic and hemp farming

Matt Baum: Last week, if you were listening, Kit and I did a Q and A. Several of you called in and left messages, which you can always do at 402-819-6417, and we answer them on the show. One of which came from a man named Rico. Rico wrote us back after we answered his question, and he had a couple more questions that he wanted to follow up on. I’m going to go ahead and read from the email he sent me, and see if I can give him some answers here, but he says, “First, the point about hemp plastics not being fully biodegradable. I’m glad you covered that because based on the research I’ve been doing or found rather, the impression I got about it was that hemp plastics are indeed fully biodegradable, which happened to be a major point on which my decision hinged because, like you said, what’s the point of just swapping one earth damaging material for another in our landfills and oceans? Doesn’t make sense. That meant a lot to me and was a huge talking point. Do you know where I can find 100% biodegradable hemp plastic manufacturers?”

They are out there, and we’re going to talk about a couple today with Morris. One of the bigger ones is Sana Packaging. It’s S-A-N-A-packaging.com, and I’ll be sure to have a link to that in the show notes, but they’re amazing. I actually just finished another interview for a show coming up with a guy that’s running a pre-roll hemp joint company that packages all their pre-roll stuff in hemp packaging as well.

Like you said, yes, it is 100% biodegradable, but there’s certain rules that go into that. You can’t just bury it and leave it there. Otherwise, just like other plastics, it’s just going to stay buried. Biodegradable, plant-based plastics need sun, they need air, they need to be left, literally left out for them to biodegrade. So, therein lies a challenge as well. So, maybe it’s not so much worrying about throwing this stuff away but repurposing what we can, sort of like bringing your hemp grocery bag to the grocery store or buying an aluminum straw or even a reusable, recycled plastic water bottle. In a nutshell, is it better for the environment? Without a doubt. Is it more biodegradable than petroleum-based plastics? Yes, but we still have to think about it before we throw this stuff away.

Rico’s second question, he says, “I’ve read that while our farmers sat near poverty because of redundant crop rotations, other nations such as China and Canada have been growing, processing, and utilizing the incredible hemp plant for decades, even centuries in the case of China. What do you know about their technologies and the possibility of sourcing and manufacturing from them? Why are these technologies not yet available for American businesses and entrepreneur startups?”

You’re absolutely right. China, Canada, and most of Europe is way ahead of us because they didn’t have the same prohibition that we had for hemp here in the United States. Now, we are starting to see more industrial hemp producers pop up, but there needs to be more demand, and the more demand, the more we will see. So, just like we sort of talked about in that Q and A, when people start asking for this stuff, looking for packaging that’s made with plant-based plastics, and I’m not just talking hemp, flax, all kinds of other things too, when major companies start to see people making those buying decisions, that is when they will be willing to invest more in it. More investment means more hemp industry.

Now, as the beginning of the question, yes, you can import this stuff, and people have been importing it for years now. In the interview that I’m about to have with Morris, he is sitting in front of two guitar cabinets that are made entirely of pressed hemp wood, and they have speaker cones in them made of hemp paper. This company that’s making the speaker cones has been making them for years now using Chinese hemp.

So, it kind of goes back to the ridiculousness of the idea of the prohibition of hemp. We were saying, no, you can’t grow it, but you can import it and use it for industrial things like paper or textiles and whatnot. Now, that is blowing up, and as hemp prohibition begins to go to the wayside, you are going to see more industry getting involved in this, and hopefully, we will see more hempcrete producers, more hemp wood producers, more hemp textile producers, but like I said, it’s going to be up to people like you and me, Rico, to convince businesses that we not only want this, we’re willing to spend money on it because we as consumers believe that it’s a more responsible and renewable way to do business.

Thanks a lot for listening to the show, Rico, and for getting back to me, and I hope that answered some of your questions. You have one more question, and I’ll shoot you an email about that, and we’ll talk. Now, let’s get to my interview with Morris Beegle from We Need a Better Alternative. Word of warning, Morris has got a little bit of a mouth on him. He came out of the rock and roll industry, and he’s not afraid to throw some cuss words around. So, if you’ve got little ones in the room, might be a good idea to listen to the rest of this episode on headphones. So, tell me about We Are For Better Alternatives. How did this get started and like what’s the mission?

Introducing Morris Beegle and We Are For Better Alternatives

Morris Beegle: 06:50 So, in 2012, I’ve been in the music business for 25 plus years and kind of looking to find another industry as the industry that I was in was really based around manufacturing, physical product, distribution and-

Matt Baum: 07:12 Are you talking about records or like actual-

Morris Beegle: 07:14 Like CDs and DVDs.

Matt Baum: 07:16 Okay.

Morris Beegle: 07:16 So, I had a production company, and we did lots of CD and DVD manufacturing and packaging, which got decimated by the internet after-

Matt Baum: 07:24 Go figure.

Morris Beegle: 07:26 … Napster and Mp3 and then here comes iTunes and Amazon and a variety of other digital music platforms that basically killed the physical media business other than vinyl, which has made a resurgence, which actually, this year, has got more sales revenue wise than CDs for the first time.

Matt Baum: 07:45 Yeah. I’m a vinyl collector myself, so …

Morris Beegle: 07:48 Yeah. So, vinyl is actually outselling CDs now.

Matt Baum: 07:51 Yeah. Go figure. I don’t remember the last time I bought a CD. I never stopped buying vinyl.

Morris Beegle: 07:58 Well, I still manufacturer CDs for some bands if I-

Matt Baum: 08:01 Really?

Morris Beegle: 08:01 If somebody wants to run a hundred or a couple hundred CDs, I’ve still got my manufacturing connections and I still do-

Matt Baum: 08:07 You’ll take those suckers’ money, huh?

Morris Beegle: 08:10 Yeah. I mean, if you want to run a couple hundred CDs, you want to spend 500 bucks and having to sell at gigs or give away or use for promo, then we’ll still do it.

Matt Baum: 08:19 So, how do you go from music production, from physical music production to hemp in the marketplace? I mean, like hemp paper, hemp wood. How does this happen?

Morris Beegle: 08:29 So, I mean doing CD and DVD production and printing and also merchandise and distribution and licensing and also events and concerts and festivals, promotion, artist management, this whole skillset, kind of this Jack of all trades, I brought over to the hemp side. We started doing T-shirts and hats and product distribution, trying to get some of this stuff placed including hemp shoes back in 2012. So, when we started Colorado Hemp Company in 2012, it was at the same time that the initiative Amendment 64 got launched in Colorado to legalize marijuana and tax and regulate it like alcohol.

Matt Baum: 09:14 Right.

Morris Beegle: 09:14 So, within that, I mean we’d already been doing medical since like 2001. 2009, it became more mainstreamed in Colorado. Dispensary started popping up everywhere. Everybody started getting their medical cards. It became a lot more available, and then, here comes the push for recreational and at the same time, within that legislation, there was an opportunity to start growing industrial hemp under that measure. It’s like, well, I’m familiar with hemp, and with my music company, we actually did some hemp shirts and hemp pads back in the ’90s, and I was familiar with the apparel side of things and basically learned about these other uses of the cannabis plant, that soap and rope and sails and kind of the history of it from the Jack Here book. Really didn’t do anything with it other than I just found out some history about the plant.

Then, when I was looking to try to go into something different besides the music industry, which I couldn’t make any money in physical media anymore … I mean by 2009, 2010, that industry basically-

Matt Baum: 10:19 Yeah. It was [inaudible 00:10:20] … I was a musician. I remember all of it so-

Morris Beegle: 10:19 Now, what am I going to do now? As an independent music promoter and producer, all of a sudden, here comes this hemp opportunity that popped up in 2012, and nobody was really talking about it that much compared to the medical and recreational side of cannabis. It’s like, well, shit. Let’s start a little T-shirt company. We can start making hemp T-shirts, and we found a couple of companies making hemp shoes, making hemp footwear. Hempy’s was making hemp wallets and beanies and doing cordage and stuff like that.

Matt Baum: 10:52 Yeah. I remember Hempy’s back in the day. Yeah.

Morris Beegle: 10:54 They’re still around. Another company called Hempmania who’s also still around was doing backpacks and duffle bags and fanny packs and wallets and had a bunch of cordage and various other little hemp fiber items. So, we started wrapping their merchandise and selling it over our website, trying to get placed in stores, and then I found a hemp paper company, Green Field Paper out of San Diego was making a hemp paper, and it’s like, “Well, hey. I’ve been in the printing business for 25 years doing commercial printing, doing CD packaging and posters and all this. It’s like, hey, we can start making hemp posters for bands and festivals and CD release parties and stuff like that.”

So, we did that, and then we started making business cards and flyers and brochures and other marketing collateral, and then from there, we launched NoCo Hemp Expo in 2014 and started doing the event thing, and then just it kind of continued on from there, doing events, trade shows, conferences, shirts, hats, printing and then all-

Matt Baum: 11:56 It’s just like licensing bands basically.

Morris Beegle: 11:57 It is.

Matt Baum: 11:58 More or less, it’s the same thing.

Morris Beegle: 12:00 It’s taking that same exact skillset and just translating it into the hemp industry and carving out our own niche because nobody’s been doing it. So, it’s like it’s wide open, and here we are, seven years later, and we’ve got a pretty successful event company, and we’ve got a paper company that’s doing pretty good considering the amount of paper that’s actually in the marketplace, which I know we’re going to talk a little bit more about here. It’s kind of the initial premise of our conversation.

Matt Baum: 12:28 Yeah.

Morris Beegle: 12:29 We’re still in the infancy of this industry domestically, and this fiber side of things, which really attracted me to the industry, is lagging way behind compared to the CBD cannabinoid side of the industry, which is what’s blown it up and made it… Everybody knows about CBD, CBD this and this, and this and that.

Matt Baum: 12:48 Right. Everybody sees that. That’s where the money is at as far as they’re concerned.

Morris Beegle: 12:51 That’s where the money’s at, and this fiber side of things is yet to really take hold here, but it will. We’ve got a brand new industry. We need processing. We need smart people, innovative people to jump into the marketplace and help develop these materials that can get them plugged into the commercial industrial side of industries and start doing replacement ingredients for some of these petrol chemical ingredients or corn or cotton or whatever it is that are not environmentally friendly type ingredients that hemp can really replace.

Hemp and the climate crisis

Morris Beegle: 13:27 So, let’s talk about that for a minute. I mean, and honestly, I don’t even know this stuff. The majority of people that I’ve talked to have either been farmers or CBD people, and that’s one of the reasons I reached out to you because I’m really curious about this. Now, I know hemp can be made into paper. It can be made into textiles. It can be compressed into wood, but give me some kind of comparison like what an acre of trees makes in wood compared to say like an acre in hemp and the processing speed. Is it better? Is it cheaper? Is it …

Morris Beegle: 13:57 Well, it’s certainly not cheaper at this point in time.

Matt Baum: 13:59 Right.

Morris Beegle: 14:01 Is it better? I think that it could be better with technology and modern day innovation, and I think that we’re seeing some of that stuff that’s happened over in Europe where they’d been building houses and commercial structures, and so you’ve got like building materials over there. You’ve also got these hemp biocomposites or bio-plastics that are being used in Audi and BMW and Jaguar for like their inner car paneling that they’ve replaced like Petro plastics with now these composite natural fiber plastics that includes hemp. It also can include flax. It can have some of these other fibrous crops out there, and it’s definitely less impactful negatively on our environment by using the stuff that we can grow from the ground pretty organically rather than sucking stuff out of the ground and making these synthetic, fairly toxic materials and plastics.

Matt Baum: 15:06 We’re cutting down a forest.

Morris Beegle: 15:10 Cutting down a forest and then-

Matt Baum: 15:10 It takes 50 years to grow back as opposed to an acre of hemp that’s going to grow back in a hundred days.

Morris Beegle: 15:16 Right, exactly. So, when they’ve done that and they’ve cleared out all this old forest, and then they go back and they replant with, let’s say GMO type pine trees to just grow it for manufacturing, nothing lives in that area after you chop it down and you burn that stuff.

Matt Baum: 15:16 Of course.

Morris Beegle: 15:37 I mean, the ecosystem is disrupted, and it’s basically dead, and from harvesting-

Matt Baum: 15:43 It’ll return but probably not for 1,500 years or something, you know?

Morris Beegle: 15:43 It’ll return, yeah.

Matt Baum: 15:44 It’s got to reestablish.

Morris Beegle: 15:48 Right, but we have to start thinking about things differently because we’ve been doing this stuff for over a hundred years now, whether that’s sucking all this stuff out of the ground, whether that’s starting to clear all these forest out and chop down all this old growth, and all that stuff has been subsidized, whether it’s on the petroleum side or the timber forestry side. We look back over a hundred years now, and we’ve done some significant devastation to our environment.

Matt Baum: 16:17 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Morris Beegle: 16:18 The world. People thinking that this stuff does not affect climate change, man does not affect climate change is absolutely freaking ridiculous. We are disrupting the natural ecosystems everywhere whether that’s in forest or whether that’s in streams and lakes or the oceans. I mean, we’re fucking things up.

Matt Baum: 16:36 Totally. Yeah, no question, and I think that’s the best way to put it. We have to stop arguing about whether or not there’s science involved here and just say, “Look, we know it’s happening, and we are definitely fucking it up.”

Morris Beegle: 16:46 We are, and if we don’t try to do something and at least acknowledge the fact that we … Hey, yeah, we really have done something, and these scientists aren’t all on the government dole trying to get a paycheck and just to make shit up.

Matt Baum: 16:59 Yeah. How many billionaire scientists can you name off top of your head? How many? Oh, wait.

Morris Beegle: 17:03 No one.

Matt Baum: 17:03 Exactly.

Morris Beegle: 17:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson is pretty popular, but he’s certainly not a billionaire.

Matt Baum: 17:09 No. No.

Morris Beegle: 17:10 I think he’s in cahoots with anybody to just make money off of putting out false information.

Thanks to our sponsors at LifePatent

Matt Baum: 17:17 … and convince us that the Earth isn’t flat. We’ll get right back to my interview with Morris Beegle, but first, a word from our sponsor. Before we move along, I am super excited to introduce you to our first sponsor for the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, LifePatent. With a full line of high quality and responsibly sourced CBD products, LifePatent offers relief from pain, anxiety and even some help getting to sleep. They even offer CBD tincture for dogs, and personally, I have a pug with a nerve issue that was causing pain, and she was shaking like crazy, and I found giving her a CBD tincture with her meals has helped her stop shaking and reduced her pain quite a bit.

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Huge thanks to lifepatent.com for sponsoring the Ministry of Hemp podcast.

Hemp as a more sustainable alternative

Matt Baum: So, where do you see hemp coming in here? How do you picture it? Two questions here. How do you picture it in the future, and why are Europeans so far ahead of us on this?

Morris Beegle: 19:16 Well, they’re so far ahead of us because they started doing this back in the ’90s. It was really HempFlax back in 1993, ’94, and Ben Dronkers who was a compadre of Jack Herer and those guys coming through the whole cannabis scene of the ’70s and the ’80s, they started the Hemp Cannabis Museum over there. Dronkers also had Sensi Seeds and gathered this huge collection of cannabis seeds and did very well by selling these seeds and made a lot of money. That money initially funded the whole HempFlax thing because they found out all this information of hemp really played this important role in our history from thousands of years ago to hundreds of years ago, and all this stuff had been done. They did all this research and found it all out. It’s like, well, how can we bring this crop back to make it part of our economy and part of our agriculture?

So, I credit really the Dronkers and those guys for getting things going in Europe. There’s another company Dyna-Gro over there who’s another big company, does a lot of the similar type things with the fiber side, and they also have done the food side with the grain and the protein powder and the hemp seeds and hemp seed oil and all that stuff. Those guys have just been at it for 25 years now, and they had to create markets over there and who’s going to use this product. They’ve just spent a bunch of time and money and created markets, whether that’s with the car manufacturers or whether that’s with the building industry over there and replacing a lot of this kind of toxic craps that you put into buildings with something that’s natural. It’s breathable. It absorbs CO2 from the air, and it’s just a better alternative, and we are for better alternatives here.

Matt Baum: 21:10 Fair enough, but nice plug. That was good. So, it’s just a matter of the fact that they’re ahead of us because they’ve been doing it longer, and this stuff is coming up in the States. Producers are starting to see there’s money to be made here. Sooner or later, the CBD boom is going to settle down, and farmers are going to realize, “Look, we can do a lot more with this plant.” What do you think is the next step here? People just start taking risks as far as putting together a hemp textile-like production or putting together hemp composite wood production?

Morris Beegle: 21:42 Yeah. I think that there’s opportunities for this fiber side of the market and the grain side of the market. There’s all these industries out there that create products that have a variety of ingredients in their products, and most likely, hemp can be an ingredient in a lot of these products. Whether these are food products or whether these are industrial products like building walls or, again, the plastic side of things or the paper side of things, the packaging industries, there’s all these different industries that create products. Let’s say the paint industry and stains and all of that, you can make that stuff from hemp seed oil. The energy industry, there’s a variety of different uses that hemp can go into that from cleaning up spills by … There’s these things called lost-circulation materials that you can shoot down into fracking that absorb the toxic shit that we’re putting into our ground as we do fracking and-

Matt Baum: 22:43 Oh, but I’ve heard it’s no harm at all. It doesn’t do any harm at all, right?

Morris Beegle: 22:47 Of course.

Matt Baum: 22:48 It’s just poison. How bad can it be?

Morris Beegle: 22:51 Yeah, getting into the water streams. Now, there’s-

Matt Baum: 22:57 Come on.

Morris Beegle: 22:59 If you turn on your faucet and flames come out, don’t worry.

Hemp as a replacement for wood and paper

Matt Baum: 23:02 No. No doubt. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Now, am I correct in assuming that hemp fiber, hemp wood, hemp plastic, stuff like that, am I correct when I assume that hemp takes less processing than a lot of other components like lumber, for example? It seems like you have to do a lot more to just plain old tree lumber than you do to make compressed hemp lumber.

Morris Beegle: 23:27 Well, I wouldn’t say that that is necessarily true. There’s significant processing depending on what you’re actually manufacturing and if it has to be the spec. A, you have to separate out the fiber from the wood, the hurd, and so, to get that completely separated, and then there’s various stages of processing for that fiber depending on if it would go into textiles and be a high-grade fiber that could actually go into making your shirts and different apparel type items or if it’s a short fiber that’s going to go into non-wovens, let’s say like paper and composites and plastics, then there’s just various processing that needs to be done. So, there is processing that definitely needs to be done to make sure that it’s the spec that gets to the market.

With like the hemp wood company that we’ve been seeing in the news here the last couple of months, they’re based out of Kentucky, and I’ve seen some of their board, their process is not quite as significant. They’re making their board similar to what they do with bamboo for flooring. It’s basically, you just chop everything into the exact … Let’s say it’s 10-inch or 12-inch parts of the stalk, and then they compress it, and they’ve got a binder that goes, and it basically just binds the entire stalk. So, the processing is pretty simple compared to a lot of the stuff. The processing that goes into the guitars is different.

What goes into making the board product for the guitar cabinets, it’s really, it’s all the fiber and hurd, and you grind that up, and then it gets compressed just like it would particleboard. The processing with that is not as significant. All you have to do is like shred that stuff into finely X size of particles, and then you just put it together, and you laminate it or bind it with a ECO-binder. So, I know that Larry Serbin from Hemp Traders, he’s the guy that’s developed this board, somebody else you should have on your podcast because he can talk about textiles as good as anybody can …

Matt Baum: 25:35 Yeah, I would love to.

Morris Beegle: 25:37 He’s been working on this type of board product for 20 years, and now, it’s coming to fruition, and he’s done a great job. We’re happy to use this board. I see all kinds of different potential applications for this board that he’s creating and to be a replacement for particle board out there. We can get the price down once we grow enough material out in the marketplace, and we can process it because processing the fiber, it is expensive, but once we’ve got all these huge facilities and you can feed it with enough biomass, then it becomes economical.

Building hemp fiber infrastructure

Matt Baum: 26:12 It seems like this is a theme that I keep hearing repeated with every aspect of the hemp business. It’s like, look, we just need to grow more of it, and if we grow more of it, then processors are going to see that, yes, there is a market for this, and they’re going to buy it, and they will process it. In the case of the wood, from what you were saying, it’s not that there’s more or less processing. It’s still, at the end of the day, it’s better than chopping down trees, and it uses less toxic crap to put it together into what it needs to be in the end. Right now, it’s expensive because we don’t have enough of it. We don’t have enough people doing it.

Morris Beegle: 26:43 Correct. It’s a brand new thing, and five, 10 years down the road, once we build out the infrastructure for processing this and actually dialed in the processes to do it, it will become economical, and it’ll be very cost competitive with wood or whatever the other competing ingredient could be. Let’s say it’s a corn ingredient or a soy ingredient or a cotton ingredient or a wood ingredient or a petroleum ingredient. Once we get the processing in place and the process is down and the amount and availability of the biomass, then it will be competitive, and I think that companies really will make transitions into using more eco-friendly materials because consumers are demanding it more now.

Matt Baum: 27:39 Yeah, absolutely, and that’s the best way we get them to do it, is keep screaming about it.

Morris Beegle: 27:40 Absolutely.

Matt Baum: 27:41 Definitely.

Morris Beegle: 27:41 Vote with our wallet, and they need to make the Coca-Colas and the Walmarts and the Best Buys of the world, all of these companies, hey, we want more environmentally friendly products.

Matt Baum: 27:53 Right. Stuff that’s-

Morris Beegle: 27:53 Know that climate change is real. We want to spend money on companies that are making products that are going to be less harmful for the environment.

Matt Baum: 28:02 Yeah, responsible products that, when we’re done with them, will break down faster and go back to where they came from to make more plants basically.

Morris Beegle: 28:11 Exactly. Exactly.

Matt Baum: 28:13 So, what do you see for the future? How soon do you think it is before we’re handing out hemp business cards, and I’m reading a newspaper or comic books are printed on hemp or I’m wearing hemp denim or something? How soon before this takes off?

Morris Beegle: 28:27 Well, you can do some of the hemp business cards. We print them all day long.

Matt Baum: 28:32 I know. You printed some for us actually, Ministry of Hemp.

Morris Beegle: 28:34 [crosstalk 00:28:34] Yeah. I’ve been printing cards for Kit for a couple years now.

Matt Baum: 28:39 So, what about mainstream, I guess is what I’m saying?

Morris Beegle: 28:43 Well, the same thing with kind of shirts. I mean, there’s been hemp T-shirts and hemp apparel for a long time, and well, this is … This hat is hemp.

Morris Beegle: 28:51 Yeah, I’ve got an old hemp hat. I can’t remember the name of the company I got it from, Colorado and … God, what’s the name? I’m drawing a complete blank. They’ve got like the crossed axis is their symbol. Super nice guys. He was like a surfer skater.

Morris Beegle: 29:04 Oh, Hemp Hoodlamb?

Matt Baum: 29:05 Yeah, totally great guys.

Morris Beegle: 29:07 There you go.

Matt Baum: 29:08 I had talked to the guy at NoCo. I actually was there, and they still had plastic bills in their hats, and he was super bummed out about it. I was like, “It’s still a kick ass hat, and it’s all hemp. I mean, that’s great.” I guess they just got someone who’s doing the hemp plastic for their bills now, so they’re full on 100% plastic hats.

Morris Beegle: 29:08 Nice.

Matt Baum: 29:28 I got to order a new one of those. I mean, this stuff is out there. It is a little expensive, and it’s just really a matter of infrastructure from what it sounds like.

Morris Beegle: 29:37 It is.

Matt Baum: 29:38 We build that out, and people are going to see this is a better way to do this. It’s going to get cheaper because you can grow more of it faster. Logically, it just seems to make sense.

After the CBD bubble bursts

Morris Beegle: 29:48 Exactly. It’s going to take a little bit of time to get there. The next three to five to 10 years, we’re going to continue to make significant progress. Attrition will happen. People that are in the game now will throw in the towel. The CBD market’s going to pop. It’s going to get in the commoditized here where there’s going to be so much supply. The price is going to go down. That’s going to come sooner than later

Matt Baum: 30:13 Oh, that bubble is going to burst big time. I’d say in the next five years. No question.

Morris Beegle: 30:17 Oh, yeah. It’ll be probably before then. Farmers have to diversify. With this crop, you need to look at all the components from not just the flower but the grain and the stalk fiber side of it and all … You can make money from all those. You might not be making the 10, 20, $30,000 an acre you are today, but when it all flushes out and becomes a regular crop, you should be able to still do pretty well in comparison to a lot of these other crops. The great thing is, is hopefully you don’t have to have the input cost that you do if you’re growing these GMO crops and spraying them with a bunch of fertilizers and pesticides.

Matt Baum: 30:58 Right, yeah.

Morris Beegle: 31:00 If we can really figure out how to grow this crop more across the board organically and regeneratively, that hopefully inspires some of these other crop industries, corn and soy and wheat and cotton, to grow more organically because just spraying stuff on all of our soil and all of our food and all this stuff that we wear, that stuff just runs off into the water, runs off into the rivers, into the lakes and into the oceans, and it’s acidifying, and it’s doing stuff that’s wreaking havoc on our environment.

Matt Baum: 31:35 Absolutely.

Morris Beegle: 31:37 We have to get away from that. If we don’t get away from it, we’re just going to poison the planet, and a whole bunch of us are going to die off [crosstalk 00:31:46]-

Matt Baum: 31:45 We can cover our eyes and then plug our ears and act like it’s not happening. That’s not going to stop you from getting killed.

Morris Beegle: 31:50 Exactly. It’s still all happening. Weather’s-

Matt Baum: 31:53 Do you think that educating the farmers, do you think that is the biggest hurdle right now?

Morris Beegle: 31:59 I don’t think that’s really the biggest hurdle. I think farmers are smart, and so many of the farmers that have got into this industry or who are now interested in farming again, they really care about the land, and they really care about their families and their communities.

Matt Baum: 32:16 Right. They live on it. I mean, they literally live on it, and if they ruin their land, they fundamentally understand, I’m out of a job. I’m totally broke so …

Morris Beegle: 32:26 Yeah. I don’t think it’s really the … The farmers understand the importance of the land. I think what’s happened more than anything is you’ve got these huge corporations and the global entities that own all this big ag, and it’s really all corporate that all this policy and practices, it just trickles down to the farmers. The farmers have sold out most of their land any … A lot of these guys, because it’s like, “Fuck it.” There’s this huge monster out there that’s buying everything up on this big industrial ag thing.

Matt Baum: 33:04 Yeah. Why fight it?

Morris Beegle: 33:05 Why fight it? All these small family farmers that everybody used to be, fewer and fewer exists today. The ones that do actually really care still, but it’s a struggle. I’ve seen this struggle since I got into … I mean, I grew up on a farm. We didn’t grow anything. We had 17 acres. We had some cows and some horses and some chickens, but we didn’t like grow any crops or anything. It was cool to grow up on a farm, but I see these farmers now, they grow stuff or they’ve got dairy farms, and it’s a fucking tough thing to do, and it’s hard to make money, and you’ve got these subsidies.

Matt Baum: 33:46 Yeah. We’ve convinced more than half of the farming population to grow soy and corn. Now, they’re screwed on it. I mean, we’ve turned farmland into deserts. We have piles of stuff going bad. We’re trying to make ethanol that doesn’t even put out as much energy as it takes to make it. I mean, at some point, there has to be a change. There has to be a breaking point. Otherwise, I mean, not only are we going to poison our soil, we’re not going to have any farmers to grow anything because they’re all going to be broke.

Morris Beegle: 34:14 Right. All we’re going to have are these big corporations that manage whatever is being grown out there, and whatever practices are being done aren’t being done by people that care. It’s all being done based on yield and profitability and shareholders, and it’s not about human health at all.

Matt Baum: 34:33 No. You said it yourself. We need a better alternative. There it is.

Morris Beegle: 34:36 We do need a better alternative, and that’s why we need millions of people that are on the front lines to join together as an army, an army of leaders that we’re all out there generally on this same mission to make a difference for future generations. I’ve got kids that are 12 and 16 years old, and where are things going to be 30, 40 years down the road? If you listen to some predictions by scientists, the one side will say, “Oh, it’s all alarmist. They said that 30 years ago.” The signs are all around us. We see the natural disasters year after year, things getting worse, things getting more extreme, hotter temperatures, colder temperatures, global warming-

Matt Baum: 35:25 We just had tornado-

Morris Beegle: 35:27 It’s extreme.

Matt Baum: 35:28 We just had a tornado in Texas last night that killed four people. They were talking about it on a Monday night football in October. I mean, like come on. How much more evidence do we need? Morris, I don’t want to take up any more of your time, man. This has been great.

Morris Beegle: 35:42 [inaudible 00:35:42].

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum: 35:41 You guys are doing an amazing … You can find out more about Morris Beegle and everything he is doing in the hemp world over at morrisbeegle.com, and of course, we’ll have a link to that in the show notes for this episode. That is about it for this episode of Ministry of Hemp Podcast, but before we get out of here, I want to thank everyone that has been downloading and supporting this show through your tweets, your Facebook mentions and going to iTunes and reviewing the show. That is the single biggest way you can help get this information to people who are looking for it. So, if you’ve got a minute, give us a star rating, maybe write us a review. I really appreciate it.

I mentioned it earlier, but you can always call me at 402-819-6417 with your hemp related questions, and we love to play them on the show and answer them. Kit, the editor-in-chief of ministryofhemp.com comes on and helps me answer your questions. We’ve done a couple of them, and so far, they’ve been a couple of my favorite shows. Speaking of ministryofhemp.com, get over there and check out our holiday gift buying guide because nothing says happy holidays like hemp for Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or whatever you choose to celebrate.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter @MinistryofHemp. Check us out on Facebook/ministryofhemp. Since I am the producer, editor and the host of this show, you can email me, matt@ministryofhemp.com with your questions, with your comments, suggestions, things you’d like to hear on the show, just about anything, and I would love to hear from you. As always, you will find a complete written transcript of this episode in the show notes because we like to make the Ministry of Hemp Podcast accessible for everyone. Thanks again for listening, but for now, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is the Ministry of Hemp, wishing you happy holidays and signing off.

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Hemp packaging could be a solution to the problem of disposable, single-use paper and plastic.

Update December 16, 2020: Sana Packaging founders visited the Ministry of Hemp podcast to discuss how they started their hemp plastic packaging company, after forming Ron Vasak-Smith, CEO, and James Eichner

Hemp packaging could replace disposable, single-use plastic

“The statistics are in: every second … a half acre of trees are cut down,” said Matthew Glyer of Hemp.Press. “7.5 bllion trees for paper alone is not sustainable.”

Every industry is struggling with the growing problem of waste. The legal cannabis industry is no exception. Most medical and recreational dispensaries use single-use plastic and foil containers. Consumers throw them away after consuming the products inside. For the most part, these materials are not biodegradable. Single-use paper packaging is also commonplace in the industry.

Researches haven’t perfected hemp plastic, yet. Meanwhile, companies like Sana Packaging are already creating composites from hemp and corn. Sana Packaging’s products combine hemp hurd, the fibrous woody core of agricultural hemp, with corn to create composite bioplastic.

Working with domestically-sourced materials also ensures the sustainability of their products. Sana Packaging sources all their hemp domestically, from Kentucky, then processes it in North Dakota.

“We manufacture in Minnesota and Arizona,” said Ron Basak-Smith of Sana Packaging. “All American made, all American supply chain.”

Hemp.Press also targets the cannabis industry with products that replace boxes or display cards made from trees with hemp paper.

Both companies want to change the laws, too. Currently, most states with legal medical or recreational marijuana programs prohibit the re-use of packaging at cannabis dispensaries. Ideally, consumers would use refillable packaging that they could bring to the dispensary over and over.

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