Cannabis Packaging Waste in Canada: The Environmental Problem Nobody is Solving

By. Pamela West

Canada’s legal cannabis industry produces millions of kilograms of packaging waste each year. Due to strict regulations, labeling requirements, and supply chain logistics Canada has created a system where plastic bags, tubes, and disposable vape devices are the norm. While legalization has brought transparency and safety to the market, it has also created a growing environmental problem.

We love cannabis because it is a plant yet the legal market surrounding it generates enormous amounts of plastic, cardboard, and disposable materials before the product ever reaches the consumer.

Why Is There So Much Cannabis Packaging Waste?

The quick answer is short-sighted regulations, packaging costs, and operational blunders. The longer answer is that cannabis supply chains are complex. Waste occurs at nearly every step of the chain from cultivation to processing, distribution, retail, and finally consumer disposal.

The requirement for child resistant (CR) packaging adds layers to the problem. Companies are required to use CR caps for products like flowers, concentrates, and oils; however, these primary containers often lack sufficient space to meet the strict labeling requirements. As a result, producers are forced to add secondary packaging, such as placing a jar inside a mylar bag, simply to accommodate the mandated information. When people think about cannabis waste, the focus is often on the empty containers left after the product is consumed. But the environmental impact starts much earlier, with the energy and materials required simply to grow, process, and package cannabis.

How Much Waste Are We Talking About?

Research from Toronto Metropolitan University estimated that between 5.8 and 6.4 million kilograms of plastic packaging waste ended up in Canadian landfills during the first eleven months after legalization in 2018-2019.

That number alone is staggering and only continues to add up each year.

It becomes even more eye opening when looking at the numbers in 2021 when Canadian producers destroyed more than seven million packaged cannabis products due to overproduction and quality issues. Those products and their packaging became a waste before they ever reached a consumer.

Waste Begins at the Grow

The waste in the cannabis supply chain starts right at cultivation.

Most of the cannabis in Canada is grown indoors, relying on large amounts of electricity and artificial lighting systems with bulbs that only last for a limited number of hours. Fertilizers, nutrients, and other inputs often arrive in single-use plastic containers.

Some facilities actively try to reduce their environmental footprint. Others are known for discarding perfectly reusable organic soil after a single crop cycle.

Walk into almost any indoor commercial grow facility and you will see miles of plastic trellis netting. Growers reuse it, when possible, but eventually it all becomes trash.

Processing and Packaging: Where Waste Sneaks In

Once cannabis moves into processing and packaging, the waste becomes more visible.

Canadian regulations require extensive labeling with warnings, product details, and government-mandated information. To accommodate all that text, packaging is often larger than necessary.

Most of that outer packaging is some form of petroleum-based plastic.

Production runs also require unique lot numbers and identifiers printed on each bag. Extra bags are often printed to prepare potential mistakes or defects but are not used; they typically cannot be repurposed later but are stored for future reference if needed. Many processing facilities have boxes upon boxes of unused packaging that will never be used. In addition, when there are changes in labelling requirements such as the significant ones made in 2025, old packaging becomes obsolete and unusable.

If a Return to Vendor (RTV) occurs and product is returned to the company, even if the product can be salvaged, the entire lot needs to be repackaged with brand new packaging, and the first run of packaging is then discarded.

Once packaged, products then move through distribution in cardboard master cases sealed with plastic tamper evident tape. Retail stores can receive hundreds of boxes every week. After a single use, those boxes are flattened and sent for recycling. Some brands have adopted customized carton or master case packaging to both reduce their plastic (e.g. tamper evident tape) and labour costs associated with taping generic corrguated boxes usually ordered via vendors like Uline.

At least cardboard can be recycled. But multiply hundreds of boxes by thousands of cannabis stores across the country and the scale of that waste becomes difficult to comprehend.

Cannabis Consumers Feel the Impact

Consumers are the final stop in the waste stream, and the planet consciously will almost always make comments about excessive packaging at the point of sale.

Most cannabis customers dislike the amount of packaging they accumulate from legal purchases, yet relatively few complain to the processors directly or elected officials strongly enough to create policy change.

For regular consumers, especially those who buy the same products repeatedly, the result can be a growing pile of empty containers, tubes, and bags. Many of these materials are not easily recyclable or accepted by local recycling programs.

Government distributors such as the British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch do provide guidance on responsible disposal. Even so, the system still places much of the responsibility on the consumer.

The Biggest Packaging Offenders

Two packaging formats stand out as particularly problematic: mylar bags and vape products.

Mylar bags are used widely across cannabis product categories. Their foil lining makes them difficult to recycle through standard municipal systems. They exist largely to meet labeling requirements, control odor, and maintain child-resistant standards. They are not usually reused by consumers.

Vape cartridges and disposable vape pens create an even more complicated recycling problem. These devices combine glass, plastic, metal, and lithium batteries, often with residual cannabis oil inside. Proper recycling requires disassembly and specialized handling.

Some organizations are beginning to address this challenge. Companies such as HYRSE in Ontario collect vape waste, ensure it is recycled properly, and provide feedback to producers seeking more sustainable packaging options. However, this program is limited in its scope to provide a nationwide solution.

A Glimpse of Future Regulations

In 2025, Health Canada made several changes to the labelling and packaging regulations such as easing the amount of required information on the labels, clear packaging windows to be able to see the product inside, and only requiring total THC rather than also including THC mg/g which was confusing to consumers. These changes, while important, were somewhat useless from a waste reduction perspective and even caused more waste in some cases where companies had to change their packaging without being able to use their already existing packaging in inventory.

Arguably, regulators could have done more such as making the excise stamp digital rather than requiring physical stamps that take a lot of resources to make and literally go straight to the trash when consumers open the product.

Beginning in 2027, British Columbia will implement Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations covering vapes and other electronic products containing batteries. These rules shift responsibility for end-of-life recycling from municipalities to the producers and consumers of those products.

Cannabis vapes, however, are currently managed under separate environmental guidelines issued by the B.C. Ministry of Environment. As a result, they are not automatically included in the same standards applied to nicotine vape waste.

While some may argue the cannabis industry deserves flexibility, the reality is that companies should have the responsibility to see their products are not harming the planet all the way to packaging end of life.

Until packaging innovation, recycling systems, and smarter regulations evolve, the legal cannabis industry will continue producing far more waste than a plant ever should.

Who has done notable things in the cannabis industry around packaging and waste?

The giant Tilray-owned brand Good Supply released its sustainable packaging program in 2023, boasting diversion of over 925,000kg of plastic from landfills while also offsetting their paper use by planting over 2800 trees. It’s something.

Another standout is a licensed sun grown cannabis producer, Purple Hills out of Ontario. In addition to running a cannabis farm they also operate the world’s largest cannabis packaging waste program servicing over 1000 shops in their province.

We hope to see more cannabis farms transition to outdoor and greenhouse organic certified that are able to create regenerative loops, conserve water, limit energy output, build healthy soil, and grow productive plants.

If more companies could use appropriately sized packaging that is truly reusable or made with biodegradable materials and that has a clear pathway to its end of life, change could happen a lot faster.

In the end, it is important to keep the conversation going and not get used to the literal garbage that has been presented as a normal part of consuming a plant.

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