Debra BorchardtNew York’s Cannabis Advisory Board met on Tuesday and detailed plans for the state’s cultivators to begin preparing to address the sustainability requirements outlined in the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA). Protecting the environment and improving the state’s resiliency to climate change are two key intentions of the law.
However, the launch of the adult-use program suffered from a slow rollout that affected farmers who harvest cannabis and then had few stores to sell it. So the Office of Cannabis Management gave the cultivators a break on this requirement until now. Licensed cultivators will be required to submit an annual report and sustainability plan to the OCM by Aug. 31, 2025.
To help with meeting the requirement, the OCM will launch a free online tool from PowerScore in the first week of September for cultivators to track electricity and water use, waste and more.
“You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and you can’t track what you don’t measure,” OCM Director of Policy John Kagia said during Tuesday’s regular Cannabis Advisory Board meeting.
The OCM states on its website that it has taken a two-tiered approach to minimizing the amount of waste generated by the state’s cannabis industry by focusing on two primary sources:
- Waste generated through cultivation and processing.
- Waste generated by consumer packaging.
The OCM also said that smaller-scale cultivation licensees would have less stringent standards and two licensing periods to come into compliance with certain energy and environmental standards. The OCM wrote, “This structure was designed to allow licensees authorized to cultivate the opportunity to determine if they are eligible to apply for and receive financial incentives from their utility services provider to exceed the office’s prescriptive energy standards.”
Spectrum News 1 reported that during the meeting, Kagia said growers must be creative to be energy efficient while not driving up product costs, or making legal shops less competitive against the illegal market.
“We’re very intentional, very conscious about trying to keep the cost down because this is already a high-cost state to operate in,” he said.
New York has sold roughly $332 million of adult-use cannabis through July of 2024.
