Cultivating Consciousness in the Emerald Triangle

In this latest installment of our series about the brands forging a sustainable future for cannabis, we’re excited to share our recent conversation with Nikki Lastreto and Swami Chaitanya, the husband-wife founders of Swami Select located in the heart of the Emerald Triangle. 

Swami Chaitanya has been growing cannabis since the 70s in San Francisco. In 2003, he and Nikki Lastreto bought a parcel of land in Mendocino County, “ideal” for growing cannabis with rich soils amid old growth trees. They founded their brand, Swami Select, pretty organically they say; the natural evolution of something already so integral to their lives. 

Now, they’re the oldest established cannabis brand in Mendocino County. Swami Select is Clean Green Certified and maintains alliances with coalitions working on issues of equity or compassion within this space.

COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY 

“We’re really about growing our plants with regenerative techniques, in living soil, being as sustainable as we possibly can be,” Lastreto says of Swami Select’s commitment to environmentally-conscious practices. Swami Select’s website describes its regeneratively-grown cannabis “grown under the sun, moon and stars” of the Emerald Triangle. With only about 200 plants on their ranch, the founding couple tell me they’re able to know each plant individually. 

Chaitanya and Lastreto use water from a pond on their property and both emphasize at different points the importance of using local inputs in their crop. Lastreto tells me that they don’t use plastic in their personal lives as much as they can help, preferring glass jars in their kitchen. So, why would it be different when it comes to their livelihood?

“Packaging has been an issue all the way along,” Chaitanya says, speaking of cannabis’s long road from one-nug-matchboxes to recyclable glass with sandal lids. In the early days of the Emerald Cup, growers put their buds in sandwich or ziploc bags for quite some time before upgrading to plastic canisters, but even in recent years, Lastreto says the event still has a “disgusting” amount of plastic waste. 

In 2021, Tree Hugger Containers won first place in the eco-conscious packaging category at the Emerald Cup. This year, we donated glass jars to the event— a move that Lastreto, a flower judge for the festivities since its inception, was thrilled to announce on stage at this year’s Cup in Los Angeles.

As with any serious commitment, Swami Select’s dedication has not been without its road bumps. Up until recently, Swami Select flower was housed in dark apothecary-style glass jars, specifically designed to keep herbs fresh. She kept raving about these, until she learned that cobalt, an ingredient to these containers, is extracted by enslaved children in the global south. “And it just didn’t sit right with us,” she says.

Now, to be fair, cobalt is in a whole bunch of things, and it’s hard to avoid. But Chaitayna says that their brand just couldn’t play a role in that game. So they pivoted.

Along with a logo and label redesign, Swami Select is transitioning to package their flower in Tree Hugger Containers glass jars. An added benefit to the recyclable component, Lastreto’s excited that consumers will be able to see the cannabis through the glass bottom—a feature unavailable with their previous stock of darker containers. 

Beyond their own moral dedication, Chaitanya’s confident their customer base shares their ethics. “I think that standing for something, representing something, as far as sustainability, that is a selling point.” 

BREAKING STIGMAS & CRAFTING COMMUNITY 

Lastreto wants to end the stigma still attached to consuming cannabis. “I’m tired of people thinking that anybody who smokes weed is a hippie stoner, doesn’t get much done…” she says. “It’s time to get that image changed, [cannabis] is for everybody.”

She’s excited to chat about the special (“beautiful royal blue”) powder-coated glass jar we’re designing for their exclusive forthcoming “Club Swami”: a program that will provide members with high-quality cannabis delivered to their door including rare and select cultivars, swag, access to farm tours, and more. 

The pair are helping put on the inaugural Mendocino Craft Farmers Auction on July 16 of this year in Mendocino County, a charity event bringing together local farmers, wineries, music, etc. Lastreto compares it to Napa Valley’s wine auctions, hoping that such events can help catapult cannabis to the prestige of other craft commodities. Chaitanya mentions that proceeds will go to Redwood Community Services’ crisis response program, citing the notable mental health struggles of small farmers amid California’s difficult regulatory hurdles for legal cannabis.

Alongside bringing sustainable cannabis to the mainstream, Swami Select’s sights are set on nurturing a larger community. In prohibition days, Chaitanya tells me, any communities that emerged in the Emerald Triangle had to be relatively underground. But as such, those legacy communities are deep-rooted and resilient. Now, those same farmers are feeling the squeeze of a demanding and unsupportive California legal market. 

Chaitanya is a co-founding board member of the Origins Council, a farmer advocacy network aimed at helping earn small time growers a “seat at the table.” The organization is working to promote appellations (geographically-distinct legal standards, think “Bordeaux wine”) and otherwise promoting policies that seek to support the legacy farmers in the Emerald Triangle.  

For the co-founders of Swami Select, it’s not just about being environmentally conscious, it’s also about thinking about their choices as cultivators and giving back to land and the community. 

“[That] community is the only reason we’ve been able to survive for so long and we want to share our crop with the rest of the world and that’s what we’re about to do.”