Three Unique Ways to Make Your Indoor Grow More Sustainable
When it comes to making your indoor grow more sustainable, there are some obvious decisions you can make to reduce your environmental footprint. Using LED lights, choosing an efficient water system, and integrating solar energy are some of the top recommendations you’ll get from cultivators and experts. While those are the most common approaches to reducing your water and electricity use, the list of ways to be more sustainable is vast and growing as quickly as our industry. In this article, our team here at TreeHC will introduce you to three unique approaches to reducing your impact on the environment.
Cultivar Selection
The size and density of the cultivars you choose impacts the energy required for your yield – larger plants don’t necessarily mean more flower. With indoor cultivation, maximizing your square footage is key so selecting cultivars that are right-sized for your operation without reducing their output is an important step towards reducing the energy that goes into every pound of flower you produce.
Another strategic way of approaching your cultivar selection is to consider the needed vegging period of the strains you select. Working closely with your supplier to understand how long the specific plants take to flower balanced with the yield the cultivar provides will help you make sure the energy and water that goes into your grow is effectively translated into flower, minimizing the waste of your operation.
Grow Mediums
Increasingly, more and more cannabis farmers are looking to soil alternatives as a growing medium. Materials like mineral wools and mosses are popular solutions for their water retention abilities but they come with devious origins. Mineral wool requires a lot of energy in production and does not biodegrade. Peat moss and sphagnum moss are also common options but the increased demand for these mosses has a direct relationship to the climate crisis. Globally, peatlands (where the mosses are grown) store over ⅓ of the world’s soil carbon. Unsustainable harvesting of peatlands threatens their future ability to sequester this carbon while actually releasing what’s been stored back into the atmosphere.
Luckily for cultivators, innovators have been hard at work developing a carbon-neutral solution. Companies like Pure Life Carbon offer a carbon-negative growing medium that is actually even more effective than its damaging competitors all while sequestering 3.7 tons of carbon for every one ton of grow media generated.
Automation
These days automation is a bit of a buzzword, capturing a wide range of technologies related to indoor cultivation. Simply put, automation in cannabis refers to integrating all of the technologies used for humidity, watering, fertilizing, lighting, venting, heating, and cooling into a single, self-operating system. The goal of automation is to create and maintain the ideal environment for your plants. Keeping these conditions in balance is one of the best ways to advance the sustainability of your indoor operation. With all inputs to your plants optimized, you won’t have to over compensate with any of the resource-intensive systems you rely on. The best automation systems are constantly taking in data and using predictive algorithms to maintain your ecosystem’s homeostasis. The Sustainable Cannabis Coalition has a great overview of automation and ways to leverage your system to protect the environment and your bottom line.
Regardless of what you do, your first step towards sustainability is your first step towards protecting your indoor cannabis operation’s future. While every business’s journey to sustainability is unique, what matters most is that you continue to look for the opportunities to make a difference for the future of our planet. Here at TreeHC, we’re happy to help you take that step in your journey with planet-first packaging.