What’s the Eco Footprint of Weed?

What’s more perfect than writing about how green the green is? I’ve personally only heard about the environmental potential of utilizing hemp. This potential is largely because of its versatility, ability to grow and thrive in diverse natural environments, can resist a shitload of pests without synthetic interference or help, and grows like crazy even if it’s in small spaces.

But that is hemp and not marijuana, and they aren’t exactly the same thing. But as far as weed goes, it’s something I only hear heated political and ethical debates about, without mention of its environmental impact.

I’m assuming it grows just as fast as hemp and can be used to make everything from clothing to personal care products to biofuel, but since I have nothing to back my shit up let’s take a look at what the world wide web says about it.

The Good

For starters, even though marijuana obviously requires energy to be grown, it’s only about 1% of America’s entire electricity footprint. That’s when it’s grown indoors anyway, which isn’t much compared to refrigerators and data centers it turns out. What about outdoor growing, you ask? Too hard to tell since growing it in some states gets you a nice cell with some friends who love bars… prison bars that is. But if grown outside, marijuana actually has quite a few benefits for ecosystems, like climate control and increased pollination. Like every other plant, pot absorbs carbon and also gives more habitat to pollinators. The importance of pollinators have been mentioned before in ALDA podcasts (basically if you like food, you like pollinators) — it’s almost like tree and munchies go together? This is assuming the weed is grown with other plants of course. Think less weed farm, more weed garden.

“…even though marijuana obviously requires energy to be grown, it’s only about 1% of America’s entire electricity footprint.”

Another ecosystem benefit could be cleaner water. This one’s pretty circumstantial, but the idea is that if medical marijuana is used more than chemical-heavy synthetic medications, then the less such ingredients pollute our waterways. This may be more of a gray (or yellow ;) area as far as benefits go, but it’s worth considering since medical marijuana has been used to treat everything from anxiety to epilepsy to MS.

Sorry to break it to you my friends, but this is where our pros list ends. And in fact, the cons list is much longer.

In A Nutshell:

• Small percentage of U.S. energy consumption
• Doper ecosystems
• Potentially cleaner water

The Bad

I started out with the good to cushion the blow for any of those who enjoy 420, but ganja does in fact have a negative impact despite its benefits. So pot only takes up 1% of America’s energy, that’s not too much…but that’s still 1% that’s being generated with unsustainable energy, and the carbon emissions from that are equivalent to that of 3 million cars. On top of energy use, marijuana requires land and water like any other plant, and lots of it.

Water is an especially critical resource when it comes to growing marijuana. We mentioned in a post not that long ago that wine needs a buttload of water to grow, but it turns out weed requires twice that. It’s exceptionally important in areas like California, where people are going head to head in a hunger games over water resources due to an ongoing drought.

“…ganja does in fact have a negative impact despite its benefits.”

Oh yeah, and did we mention that weed isn’t exactly an “organic” product? Oh no, despite the fact that both of these two things are associated with hippies, they aren’t synonymous. Your run of the mill weed is grown with synthetic and often toxic pesticides and fertilizers, not to mention straight up rodent killers. This can be — and has been — pretty disastrous for wildlife and water resources in areas where the marijuana is grown.

In A Nutshell:

• Primarily grown using unclean energy
• Logging is required
• Gives wine a run for its money in water usage
• Wouldn’t pass the USDA Organic test

The Complicated

For the record, there def needs to be more research before anyone decides for sure that weed is primarily good, primarily bad, or just straight up neutral as far as its environmental footprint goes. As a study by Ithaca College states, research in this area is lagging behind the rate at which marijuana is expanding. IMO, it’s going to be hard to get a lot of solid, reliable studies on this topic because of the strong opinions related to pot smoking and legalization, and the biases that follow (whether that bias is supportive or unsupportive.) Even many of the sources in this article sounded like they were deeply biased one way or the other!

One point to make is that some of the negative impacts of marijuana may be alleviated by legalization. Know how farmers markets are more sustainable than supermarkets? Well, it turns out that weed farmers markets are a thing and put the spotlight on small, sustainable farms (who knew drug cartels weren’t sustainable?) Obviously this can only be done in states without pot prohibition though.

“…there def needs to be more research before anyone decides for sure that weed is primarily good, primarily bad, or just straight up neutral as far as its environmental footprint goes.”

On the other hand, weed could just be inherently detrimental to the environment, and maybe legalization would make the industry grow so much that small markets wouldn’t be common enough to alleviate the environmental impact. It’s too hard to tell with the info available right now, but I think it’s safe to say that while we wait for more answers, 1 in 8 Americans will continue blazing up.

In A Nutshell:

• Too understudied to say mostly good or bad
• Biases also get in the way
• Legalization may remove some negative impact

So whatchu think? Is the eco footprint of pot mostly good, mostly bad, or neutral? Do you think legalization is a good or bad idea for the environment? Share your thoughts in the comments and when you’re done, don’t forget to #protectyourwild (whether you light up or not)!

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By Darian Williams, ALDA’s Blog and Digital Marketing Specialist Intern

Originally published at alda.life.