5 Ways To Make The Cannabis Industry More Sustainable

2. Conserve Water

Unfortunately, cannabis is a high water-use plant. It consumes up to 23 liters of water per plant per day. That’s more than the grapes used for wine picked from California vineyards. There in that state of eternal sunshine and drought, cannabis farms utilize the watersheds to keep their crops thriving.

Just four watersheds alone supply water to between 23,000 and 32,000 marijuana plants, depleting each watershed by 138,000 to 192,000 gallons per day.

Since weed has been legalized in the state, farmers must now comply with state laws limiting their consumption of water from these areas near the Emerald Triangle. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act now forces those taking from these watersheds to prove they have the legal right to this water as well as build storage for this water for the winter months.

In this way, the surface-water flows will be tapped less, encouraging the watershed to restore naturally.

Besides controlling the consumption of the natural supply, cannabis growers look for other alternative methods to conserve water. GrowX may be leading the way. Using a system called “aeroponics”, this company discovered one of the most brilliant ways to make the cannabis industry more sustainable.

Following NASA’s lead when they learned about the process with beans, GrowX experimented with the cannabis plant, suspending it by its roots in a moist environment. Water vapor keeps the plant hydrated.

But neither soil or hydroponic apparatus are needed.

Aeroponics requires 95 percent less water than outdoor farming, 40 percent less water than indoor hydroponic farms.

To top it off, the system gets more bang for the buck while conserving water. Amazingly, using aeroponics can yield 300 percent larger than traditional yields. Knowing all this, it appears aeroponics may provide a solution to keeping the industry more sustainable.