How a California Hauler Makes Cannabis Waste Collection Easy

California is known as a frontrunner in legislation and regulation. Even though cannabis has been approved for medical use in the state since 1996 and recreational use since 2016, the state's burgeoning industry is still navigating the waste it produces.

Easy Waste Management, a Los Angeles-based company founded just five years ago, is working to inform government officials, businesses and the public about the cannabis waste stream and the plant itself.

"If it's cannabis, the waste really can't be sold, which is understandable for the product," said Gary Altunyan, director of business development, Easy Waste Management. "For example, the stems, which are hemp fibers, can be used for making clothing or some sort of building materials. I think we could see a lot of value added once we figure out what should be regulated more than what shouldn't be. It's really good waste. It's  the same as hemp."

Altunyan spoke with Waste360 about the startup and how its planting seeds of knowledge and understanding when it comes to cannabis waste.

Waste360: What have been some of the biggest hurdles or challenges to growing a business in both the cannabis and waste/recycling industries?

Altunyan: The biggest thing was actually breaking into the waste industry. There are a lot of regulations for good reason and a lot of public health concerns. Every city and every county has different regulations about how waste normally should be treated. Now you're adding in cannabis, which they haven't even really discussed. So, we're seeing all this new type of waste. We kind of had to call places and say look, it's cannabis but it's green waste or it's ethanol that's tainted with THC, but it's just oil.

There are a lot of new things that we're seeing in the industry. We work with the fire departments because of post-extraction biomass and trim that comes out because [officials say] maybe it's hazardous waste because it had gone through an ethanol process. But, if you look at when they do extraction from corn and things like that, it's not hazardous. So, why would this be? I think the biggest hurdle was getting everyone off the stigma that cannabis is scary and that anything that has to do with cannabis is just a danger to public health. It's not right.

Waste360: What types of cannabis waste does the company manage? What about packaging?

Altunyan: We handle all facets of the industry and packaging at the retailer and the distributor side. We have a few issues where product needs to be removed from the packaging before it's able to be rendered unusable and unrecognizable, which is one of the rules before you dispose of it. It has to be done on site.

With retail stores, it's fine because it have 20 to 30 to 100 different items that come in slowly. They open it, empty it out and put the packaging separate. But if a large distributor has 50,000 items that expired during the year, it's a lot of manpower and labor.

We have a truck - it's a certified product destruction truck - that goes on site and shreds it up inside a hopper. The problem with that is everything gets mixed together - glass, plastic packaging, cardboard, the actual product itself. That ends up at a landfill. There is no way to recycle that. The only way to do it just wouldn't be feasible from a business perspective. For example, Mylar bags are not able to be recycled because it's a plastic with a foil film, which means it's impossible to split up. So, those end up in a landfill. Vapes end up in a landfill a lot because nobody's willing to recycle the metal with the plastic because it has THC. So, it's not worth the risk or hassle.

Glass jars have stickers on them, So, they have to be peeled off before they're recycled. There's a lot of waste. I think as the industry becomes a little more mature, a lot of these packaging companies may shift to something that's a little more compost friendly such as printing directly onto the glass as opposed to stickers. Those are certain things we've been talking with a few of our friends in industry to see if that's something we can help spearhead. That's definitely the biggest waste we've seen. Everything else can be composted or recycled. 

Waste360: What are the main misconceptions about cannabis and the waste produced in the industry? 

Altunyan: It's becoming more and more legalized. It's close to federal legalization, hopefully. These are just businessmen. They're trying to do the right thing. They're trying to follow all the laws. They're paying their taxes. If we don't regulate the waste and if we don't do it the right way, the biggest issue is it ends up in the wrong place. We've seen a lot - especially in inner cities.

People dumpster dive, especially near these cannabis facilities, because they expect something to be in there. If it failed or it's some sort of bad product and they get into it, it might cause some sort of public health issues or it just ends up in the black market.

[Cannabis] ends up in the street because [retailers] just throw it in the bin, someone finds it and starts selling it. So, that's been the biggest issue is what happens if we don't do it right a nd if we treat it like it's something bad and don't try to understand it. If we're not putting in the time to understand this new waste industry, we're definitely gonna fall behind and see a lot more issues than if we did.

Waste360: What opportunities do you see with federal legalization?

Altunyan: A lot more scalability. Right now, if you're a brand that wants to work in separate states, you have to have a whole different company. Nothing can go across state lines because that's when things become federal. It just becomes illegal automatically.

Once that opens up, we'll definitely see a lot more interstate commerce with cannabis - vertical integration across the states, better regulations - because then we could treat it more like the tobacco industry and the alcohol industry, which are much more established.  

I still see regulation because it is still a substance at the end of the day, but it'll just allow more national companies to get involved. Maybe we'll finally put in the time to research so we can be able to just have routes where we go just pick waste up as opposed to signing a manifest every time. There's a lot of labor involved on the waste side of this because it's kind of similar to medical waste, which is a much more established industry. The driver gets out, inspects the barrel, sees what's inside, categorizes it, weighs it, then loads it into the truck. We can't just go pick it up, dump it into our truck and leave. So, a lot more compliance aspects.