By Melanie Holland, ACS Compliance and Training Director
As I watched our facility’s last HPS flower room get harvested, it felt like watching the sun set on an old era of indoor growing. Room by room, we’ve said goodbye to all our blazing-hot and inefficient HPS lights, and replaced them with high-quality, full-spectrum white LEDs.
Of all the different types of industrial-scale growing operations, the warehouse-style indoor facility with an accelerated environment is among those with the most waste, the largest carbon footprint, and the biggest overall environmental impact. One of the main reasons is the use of HPS lighting. Until now, HPS lighting was always considered the best option for cannabis to produce the highest potency and yields, but there were always drawbacks: The lights themselves consume tons of power, and because they generate so much heat, the grow rooms have to be cooled with ginormous industrial air conditioners all day every day. Also, if HPS rooms contain fertigation reservoirs, the water must also be constantly pumped through industrial chillers.
For these reasons and more, LED lighting is quickly becoming the new industry standard, and we’re proud we made the switch at ACS. There are a lot of skeptics out there who don’t think LED-grown cannabis produces as high potency and yields as HPS-grown. And if we traveled back in time to about 2014 or earlier, the skeptics were probably right! In the last several years, however, LED research and technology has made huge advancements, and with that has come a greater understanding of how plants actually absorb and utilize light. Today’s high-quality, full-spectrum white LEDs, along with top-notch growing practices, will produce yield and potency results that are at least as good as weed from the HPS days of auld, but with a dramatic reduction in power consumption.
The LED project was our biggest yet in our mission to make ACS as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible. Other developments we’ve made over the years include a recycling program for used packaging, a composting program for all our plant-related organic waste, and we’ve recently joined the MA Cannabis Sustainability Coalition, a group of cannabis industry leaders striving to create more opportunities for businesses to adopt environmentally friendly practices.
ACS’s new LED-grown cannabis is due to begin hitting the shelves in the coming months, so be sure to keep an eye out!