Saskatoon pot store ‘goes green’, brings in recycling for cannabis packaging

Cannabis shop going green A Saskatoon cannabis store is now offering customers a way to recycle their pot packaging. Laura Woodward reports.

Saskatoon’s Living Skies Cannabis store is making an effort to be even more green.

The shop has brought in a recycling bin, designed for marijuana packaging.

“This was an optional thing for us cannabis retailers, but to us, this wasn’t an option. We have to do this, because it’s the right thing to do,” Cierra Sieben-Chuback, owner of Living Skies Cannabis, said.

The bin is the brainchild of New Jersey-based TerraCycle. The recycling company teamed up with cannabis brand, Tweed, to create a recycling program for marijuana packaging.

According to TerraCycle, all the pot packaging collected from retailers gets melted down into plastic pellets and then goes towards building things such as benches or playgrounds.

“This was a no brainer, really,” Sieben-Chuback told CTV News.

The business owner said she often hears concerns from customers about the amount of waste in cannabis packaging.

“That’s probably one of their main concerns with the legalization of cannabis, [customers] saying that it’s just way too much,” she said.

“And to be fair, there is so much packaging involved with cannabis.”

Most of Canada’s marijuana is sold in single-use plastic containers – what Canada’s Environment Minister, Catherine McKenna, warned are ruining oceans.

At the G7 ministers meeting in September, McKenna said the nation needs to have a strategy towards having zero plastic waste.

“We have to do more. We have to do much more. We have to move to zero plastic waste,” McKenna said.