Presentation Abstracts

Federal / Provincial / Municipal Tension: On October 17, 2018, the Federal Cannabis Regulation (SOR /2018 – 144) came into force. The Federal laws are heavily weighted toward licensing, production and cultivation requirements, quality and testing requirements, with minimal environmental guidance. The Cannabis Regulation requires cannabis facilities to be equipped with air filtration to “prevent the escape of odours”. Yet odour is more commonly regulated under the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) in Ontario, including considerations of Adverse Effects and the potential requirement of an Environmental Compliance Approval (ECA). Local municipalities will have to address the immediate impacts of additional drain on municipal systems and other local level impacts.

Environmental or Agricultural Treatment: Section 9.1 of the Ontario EPA broadly prohibits the discharge of a contaminant into the natural environment, without a permit, with one exception for “any plant, structure, equipment, apparatus, mechanism or thing used in agriculture.” It remains to be clarified whether cannabis growers would fall within that agricultural exemption. How will this change with the introduction of edibles, coming this year?

Some producers will use greenhouses, which are believed to be operationally superior. Under the Nutrient Management Act, there are rules about how greenhouse nutrient feedwater is transported and stored, as well as provisions concerning soil sampling and analysis and application limits. How will these apply to cannabis and what agricultural exemption may be available to Licensed Producers?

The legalization and normalization of cannabis has created a “blossoming” new industry. But, it has created many new issues as well. The speaker will discuss some technical and legal issues associated with cannabis odour. Some of the issues which will be covered include: the legal issues of odours leaving one property and entering another, the difficulty with regulating these issues as well as enforcing them, and tools for control of cannabis odour.

The pungent smell of cannabis, discernible from an early memory, exposure or use.

Filtered, covered-up or dispersed, the management of the distinguished smell is both challenge and opportunity. The neighboring community is a stakeholder of odor management. What choices are available, which options are on the table, where do we find practical strategies ?

Literature on cannabis scent reports the Terpene Ensemble. However, the skunk scent is NOT of terpene origin. Dimethyl sulfide, the Celebrity, and reduced sulfurs, the Entourage, yielding the skunk notes of the grow.

Odor management encompasses zoning, facility design, schedule ventilation, selected filtration, emission testing, amortizing costs, ambient monitoring, and community involvement.

Cannabis growers are responsible for managing process water that can contain a number of constituents including growth nutrients, pesticides, active pharmaceutical ingredients, cleaning agents and solids from soil and plants. This workshop will discuss simple, customizable, low-energy, integrated solutions for treating process water to remove contaminants, reclaim nutrients and provide high-quality water for reuse in the greenhouse. Attendees will learn about biological and chemical treatment options as well as solids dewatering and filtration processes that offer quick, cost-effective installation, require little operator attention and provide process flexibility to accommodate site-specific needs and the evolving regulations for the treatment, and, reuse and disposal of cannabis process water.

In the past couple of years, producers have been increasingly searching for composting solutions to meet Health Canada destruction requirements for their cannabis residues before exporting from their facilities, or to create a final compost product to recycle back into production to save on costs for growing media or to export for use elsewhere. Brome Compost proposes solutions that are most suited to their clients' needs, since these vary considerably between producers, either for the volumes to treat or the target material. We try and demonstrate the advantages of our system over other destruction methods and more often than not, it is a no-brainer!

The Cannabis Industry: A Survey of Environmental Impacts, Challenges and Opportunities

Presented by: Jens Schmarbeck, Environment and Sustainability Manager, Aurora

This presentation provides a general survey of the cannabis industry as it relates to environmental aspects. It will briefly touch on the external framework this brand-new industry operates in, with a stronger focus on current growing and manufacturing practices. The presentation’s focus is environmental impacts like emissions, wastewater, organic and inorganic waste. It also explores solutions/processes utilized to lower or eliminate the impacts. An example would be the organic waste disposal approaches. Finally, this presentation outlines opportunities for the environmental consultation community to engage/support this exciting industry. Canada is becoming the world leader in cannabis growing and manufacturing and whatever we develop here will be applied worldwide. Herein lays the main advantage for everyone engaged in this endeavor.

Phosphorus – a Fertilizer, a Pollutant, an EU Critical Material, and an Important Global Food Security Element

Speaker: Sydney Omelon Ing. Associate Professor, Mining and Materials Engineering, McGill University

Phosphorus is a critical nutrient for agricultural productivity, including cannabis quality [1]. As a fertilizer, phosphorus is available in a variety of soluble forms. Few users are aware of the phosphorus fertilizer production process, or of the non-renewable source of phosphorus (phosphate rock) required to produce phosphorus fertilizer.

Excess phosphorus is generated from excessive agricultural application, concentrated manure production due to commercial operation, and urban sewage. When this excess phosphorus reaches natural waters, algal blooms and eutrophication are undesired consequences. In these cases, the phosphorus that was previously an agricultural limiting nutrient becomes an environmental pollutant.

The current process to produce phosphorus fertilizer from non-renewable phosphate rock is unsustainable, and in the future may become economically unstable. Morocco and Western Sahara are thought to hold 70 % of the world’s phosphate rock reserves. Morocco, Western Sahara, China, Algeria, and Syria are estimated to hold more than 80 % of the world’s phosphate rock reserves [2]. There are no operating phosphate rock mines in Canada, and the United States’ reserves are estimated to be depleted in a few decades [2]. Due to its importance and unavailability in the EU, the EU has designated phosphate rock as a “critical material”.

Global food security relies on affordable and available phosphorus fertilizer. To avoid future geopolitical and economic constraints on its availability, a few processes for phosphorus recovery from waste have and continue to be developed. Struvite (an ammonium magnesium phosphate mineral) is now a possible product from municipal wastewater sewage treatment, especially when the economics and availability of magnesium chloride are favourable.

Other chemical processes for phosphorus recovery are under investigation. Their success depends on the phosphate concentration in the waste, the type of waste, and the other components In the waste. It is possible that phosphorus recovery strategies could be developed for the Canadian cannabis industry and licenced to other producers.

[1] Coffman, CB and Gentner, WA “Responses of Greenhouse-grown Cannabis sativa L. to Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium” Agronomy Journal, 69: 832-836, 1977.

[2] Carrington, D. “Phosphate fertiliser ‘crisis’ threatens world food supply”, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/06/phosphate-fertiliser-crisis-threatens-world-food-supply (Accessed 08SEP2019)