How Green Is Your Pot?

[CaliforniaHiker]

How Green Is Your Pot?

A new collective is trying to sell sustainable, organically grown marijuana, but patients are hooked on indoor weed that wastes energy and pollutes the planet.

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Five hours north of San Francisco, up Highway 101, nature truly rules. Geology has reduced the mighty six-lane freeway to a two-lane, landslide-prone country road. Off the highway and off the grid, miles and miles up country roads whose names cannot be disclosed, mountain lion and female deer run through Kim's front yard.

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Set against the priceless backdrop of the Humboldt hills, this serene garden tended by an aging hippie seems like an iconic, timeless scene — one that many people might imagine is what typical pot-growing looks like. But the reality couldn't be more different.

Northern California's highly advanced medical marijuana market is dominated not by hippie-grown, outdoor, sustainable marijuana, but by fossil-fueled and nuke-powered indoor weed. The medical stuff is just a small fraction of the recreational market, but, in total, indoor pot consumes an estimated 8 percent of all electricity generated in California and 1 percent of all electricity generated in America. Its greenhouse emissions equal that of six million cars. Growing just one joint indoors emits two pounds of CO2.

Indeed, marijuana, once synonymous with all that is green, has become anything but in the region that gave birth to the environmental movement. Residents in the liberal Bay Area routinely elbow past each other to buy cage-free eggs, free-range beef, and organic strawberries, and yet their weed habit costs a Fukushima's-worth of power every year.

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Very interesting, in depth article comparing various growing methods, and their real environmental cost.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/how-green-is-your-pot/Content?oid=2917086

[fredamae]

1. Another case for Ending Prohibition

The laws, rules and policies governing Cannabis have forced it inside.

[just55650]

5. agreed

[tridim]

2. When I used to grow (100% legal and licensed)..

I used a recycled organic drip system in coco fiber. Nutrients and water were pumped up from a reservoir below and dripped back down into the reservoir via gravity to be reused. Coco fiber is a byproduct of coconut production and is reusable for at least half a dozen grows. Coco is a gorgeous soil-less medium. I use it for house plants now.

The only non-green part of my grow was the light and ventilation. All things that could be avoided if cannabis was legal and I could grow outdoors.

BTW the article is wrong, Cannabis consumes CO2 and emits oxygen. I think I learned that in 1st grade. DERP.

[CaliforniaHiker]

3. I read it as the energy used to grow

one joint worth of marijuana indoors emits 2 pounds of CO2.

[tridim]

4. I guess that makes sense..

I wonder how much C02 my plants consumed? That's the calculation I'd really like to see, since it may offset the C02 used for energy.