Bill 882 created the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Waste Management Act that affirms the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) as the bodies watching over the new laws and regulations regarding medical marijuana waste. We understand that it is a very new and rapidly evolving industry, therefore we want to make sure to educate Oklahoma businesses in the legal process of disposing waste product. Whether a lab, grower, processor, or dispensary, waste product must be handled under DEQ and OMMA guidelines that are sometimes difficult to understand and convoluted, so that’s why we are here to educate and assist with your cannabis waste disposal needs.
Click here to read the full Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Waste Management Act.
Medical Marijuana dispensaries and growers go through pounds of product every week.
They also create pounds of marijuana waste, but regulations make it tough for some of them to get rid of it. Last year, the law changed requiring companies with special permits to get rid of marijuana waste. The problem is, there are only a couple of them, and getting approved can take months.
Read full article on OKC Fox 25
The main rule with cannabis waste is: you can’t just throw it away. The general rule of thumb is anything that has THC or comes into contact with THC has to be ground up and mixed with an aggregate material until it is “unusable and unrecognizable”. This is to prevent any material with THC from being accessed by unauthorized people (think minors, pets…), or from having THC end up in the soil or a water source. For this reason, cannabis waste has to be stored securely and only accessed by authorized personnel.Packaging or materials that have made contact with cannabis that is not for sale or usable in any way must be designated as cannabis waste. This could include but is not limited to:
Cannabis waste is essentially regulated very similarly to hazardous waste. In Oklahoma cannabis waste is referred to as “a special regulated waste”, which means it needs to be stored, handled, transported, processed, and tracked in very specific ways.
Read about the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Waste Management Act