Marijuana Business Magazine May-June 2019

Marijuana Business Magazine | May-June 2019 84 Look outside cannabis: Older industries—especially manufacturing and food companies—have decades of experience finding ways to monetize waste, or at least to get rid of it cheaply. Adin Alai, CEO of 9Fiber, a Silver Spring, Maryland, company setting up a Colorado factory to recycle cannabis-fiber waste, joined Recycle Colorado, a waste- stream industry and advocacy group to find contacts and learn business strategies. Keep expectations low: Marijuana and hemp waste may be promising compo- nents for other industries, but it’s still garbage. “If you’re selling waste products, you’re selling it cheap,” Gordon said. Start Simple Cannabis waste operators say the prom- ise of turning hemp stalks and marijuana waste biomass into eco-friendly industri- al components remains elusive. For all the talk of how many things hemp can produce, the high price of changing manufacturing processes means that even well-wishing industries are slow to adopt new inputs. And while the cannabis industry may be booming, it’s still so small that hemp and marijuana stalks can’t begin to supply large manufacturers such as an automaker. But there’s opportunity right now in cannabis waste, even a niche as small as animal bedding. Arman Zeytounyan, co-founder of EcoWaste Services of Burbank, California, sells cannabis waste as agricultural compost. “We were trying to figure out ways to repurpose (cannabis) material, looking for brandable ways and getting it back into the system. “Then we thought, ‘Can we just sell this as a compost?’ So, that’s what we’re doing, putting it back into the ground for agricultural reasons. “What we want to do is create these materials and repurpose them for something else … and we’re working on it. “But that’s not to say there’s nothing important about the environmental side of it,” Zeytounyan added. “Getting the education out there for people in the industry that … real cannabis recycling exists, this is not something you should throw away in the dumpster.” Kristen Nichols covers hemp for Marijuana Business Magazine and can be reached at kristenn@hempindustrydaily.com . Silver Spring, Maryland-based 9Fiber is setting up a factory in Colorado to recycle cannabis fiber. Courtesy Photo EcoWaste Services sells cannabis waste as agricultural compost. Courtesy Photo