Spearheaded by our San Diego team’s leadership and desire to give back to the communities in which we reside, the Cannabist team began hosting beach clean-ups with our vendors beginning in late 2019. Following several successful events, we engaged Purpose First to further our impact on our local California communities.
By 2021, our San Diego Cannabist location began to lead monthly beach clean-ups with Purpose First, a NGO whose mission is to reduce pollution through waste removal from coastlines. The San Diego Cannabist team has since hosted 20 beach clean-ups with Purpose First, with additional clean-ups planned. Since the start of our partnership, we have removed almost 5,000 lbs of trash from California’s coastlines.
Since its inception, the program has exploded in popularity amongst our staff, customers and friends as a community engagement event frequented by hundreds of attendees. To raise awareness for our mission and monetary funds to further our work, we donated t-shirts for sale and to wear at Purpose First beach clean-ups.
We look forward to continuing this partnership as we work to accomplish our shared goal of limiting our effect on the environments in which we live and restoring California’s natural surroundings.
Throughout 2021, TGS’ cultivation centers underwent a multi-million dollar rehabilitation to replace all lighting with Fluence LED bulbs to improve our energy efficiencies and limit our impact on climate change. As the cannabis production process requires a substantial amount of energy - especially electricity - the results of participating in the Fluence initiative proved immense. In 2021, TGS achieved $880,000 in annual energy cost savings and decreased their C02 emissions by 6,141 tons annually - along with receiving a $1,000,000 rebate from Xcel Energy to subsidize our efforts. According to Fluence, the reduction in CO2 emissions is equivalent to removing 1,304 cars from our roads. Cost savings have grown tremendously since last year, allowing us to save $844,9740 by mid-year while decreasing CO2 emissions significantly.
“Our mission is to help the world grow smarter, one we know Columbia Care shares through their innovative use of LED technology,” said Chris Bezuyen, Fluence Senior Manager. “We are consistently seeing cannabis growers save up to 40% on energy costs with Fluence’s best-in- class LED fixtures and achieve incredible rebates like those offered through Xcel Energy. We’re proud to collaborate with the Columbia Care team to meet and exceed their sustainability goals.”
As the cannabis industry continues to lean heavily on single-use plastic packaging solutions, we believe it’s our responsibility to spearhead the trend of limiting our impact on the environment and reducing the effects of climate change. To do so, we began cutting down on single-use plastics used for packaging, starting with our most widely sold national brand: Seed and Strain.
Using research conducted by a cross-functional Capstone group of high performers throughout the organization, all eight markets to sell the Seed & Strain pre-rolls began producing and selling the product in a 100% compostable tube and label (made from a paper substrate). Launched on Earth Day 2022, Seed & Strain became our first national brand to be sold at our dispensaries (and to our wholesale partners) in an entirely sustainable packaging solution, and we look forward to continuing this process for our various brands. This change has allowed us to eliminate 8,099 non-recyclable plastic tubes monthly in the Colorado market alone.