Sustainable Cannabis Corner: Supply Chain Issues Lead to Sustainability
By: Shawn Cooney, Co-Founder of the Sustainable Cannabis Coalition and Cloud Farming
It is no secret that the cannabis industry is suffering from supply chain issues due to the global pandemic. Here in the U.S. companies are feeling the pinch from shortages in the workforce, (delivery drivers, fulfillment workers, and skilled equipment operators), to procuring the equipment needed to help grow and produce cannabis products.
And what about the buildings and greenhouses where the plants are grown, or the manufacturing facility where cannabis is processed? These structures must be built, but the supply chain is broken. Steel is in high demand and remains difficult to come by.
Niall McManus, co-owner and President of Valiant-America, a leader in consulting and general contracting, began to notice issues within the supply chain during the first COVID lock-down in March 2020.
“We noticed the suppliers were having a tough time. Steel is still a big problem. On top of that, there were unique weather patterns that disrupted the supply chain, for example, a massive insulation factory went down in Texas as a result of freezing temperatures.”
McManus attributes staff shortages to further complicating the situation.
“There are no timelines for procuring materials, and even if we could make all the delivery timeframes, there are not enough workers to facilitate manufacturing and transportation of products.”
Despite the frustration that industries around the world are experiencing, there has been a bright spot for Valiant-America and the cannabis industry. The Valiant team has doubled down their work with architects and engineers to find more sustainable and readily available materials that allow them to continue building the highest quality structures.
“We have explored many building structures that don’t involve steel. We have successfully worked with clients and vendors to drastically reduce their timelines while working around the supply chain tangle. At the same time, we are employing greener strategies that now make financial sense while reducing carbon emissions,” said McManus.
Steel accounts for a great deal of embodied carbon - the CO2 released during material extraction, manufacture, and transport, combined with construction emissions. Unlike operational carbon, which can be reduced during a building’s lifetime, embodied carbon is locked in as soon as a building is completed and can never be decreased.
This burgeoning space holds a unique opportunity to implant sustainability in its roots in a way that no other industry has. Companies like Valiant-America, in partnership with innovative architects like Anderson Porter Design, are paving the way for this nascent industry by designing and building manufacturing facilities, dispensaries, and greenhouses with more efficient and sustainable materials.
While COVID and inflation remain at the heart of supply chain woes, building a more sustainable industry may be the byproduct. To that, every cloud might just have a silver lining.
ABOUT THE SUSTAINABLE CANNABIS COALITION
Since its foundation in late 2020, the Sustainable Cannabis Coalition (SCC) has laid the groundwork for a more sustainable and equitable industry. The SCC is currently sponsoring energy reduction research being conducted by students at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering under the guidance of professors and mentors from Rocky Mountain Institute and Third Derivative. The eight-month study is scheduled to conclude in late Spring 2022.
The SCC has also been working with ASTM International to form a new cannabis subcommittee on sustainability. The subcommittee, D37.09, seeks to develop sustainability standards tied to key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help the cannabis industry be more efficient, transparent, and well-regulated.
Most recently the SCC aligned itself with Sustain.Life, an easy-to-use software as a service (SaaS) platform that empowers organizations to adopt more sustainable business practices. With the addition of this program that includes emissions calculators, program management tools, standards alignment tools, employee benefit offerings, and a sustainability policies builder, the SCC aims to streamline and simplify industry sustainability efforts.
