Tweed does their part to pack bowls instead of landfills

Cannabis consumers are concerned with excessive plastic packaging. 

Margaret Harvey
Kicker

It’s been eight days since Canada legalized cannabis, and although there is a shortage of marijuana across the country, there is no shortage of complaints about the packaging.

Darcy Bartlett, a cannabis user, thinks the packaging is a step in the wrong direction. She’s concerned with the excessive amount of plastic packaging especially when there are so many people concerned with reducing plastic waste.

“There’s an ocean full of plastic and we’re just going to create some more?”

On the Government of Canada’s website, it states that packaging does not have to meet a standard shape, size, or material. But all packages must be child-resistant, opaque or translucent, and tamper-evident.

If the packaging meets the correct regulations, it doesn’t matter what the material is. Yet, plastic is cheaper than most other materials.

“There are lots of plastics out there that are biodegradable,” Bartlett said. “They are made out of cellulose, and hemp, and different materials that could do the same thing they’re looking for, but not be in a landfill a thousand years from now.”

Although the packaging has shocked some consumers, the cannabis company Tweed is doing their part to help the environment.

Tweed has a partnership with TerraCycle, an eco-friendly company that works to recycle waste that is seen to be typically non-recyclable.

Through their partnership, Tweed has bins set up in all their retail stores to collect all kinds of cannabis packaging waste. It’s not just Tweed consumers’ waste, either. They take in all dispensary’s waste.

David Primmer, the manager of Tweed at the Kenmount Road location, says he hasn’t heard any complaints about the packaging in person but has seen them on social media.

“We just comment and say, ‘we actually have a recycling program,’” Primmer said.

The bins at the Kenmount Road location are located in the front of the store, next to the cash registers. One bin is for paper, the other for plastic.

“We try to encourage it at the sale [of the product], too,” Primmer said about the recycling program.