With climate change and greener, more eco-friendly solutions at the front of most people’s minds and cannabis more popular than ever before, it makes total sense to combine the two, right?
That’s what Marian Erbach, a German national living in Jamaica and owner of the Germaican Hotel, decided to do.
Frustrated by the plastic waste that often washed ashore and littered the sand at Long Beach Bay on the east coast of Jamaica, Erbach put up a sign offering one free “pure ganja no tobacco added” spliff for each bucket of trash someone brought him.
He rolled up 56 joints, each holding a gram of cannabis, and thirty only minutes later someone already had a full bucket to exchange.
“The buckets are at the bar next to my sign, so take up a bucket, walk the beach, fill it, bring it to the bar and get a spliff,” said Erbach. “One of the funniest things about all that, the two buckets I bought were more expensive than all the joints.”
Puff, Puff, Give Back
Doing good for the earth and being rewarded for it with cannabis is not just exclusively Erbach’s idea, however.
In states in the U.S. where cannabis is legal for recreational use like Colorado and Maine, similar initiatives have spurred people into eco-friendly action.
In 2016, the Colorado Springs-based Pothole Cannabis Club offered a special 4/20 deal, giving people who came out and helped clean up trash at a local park a free joint.
Taking inspiration from that clean-up, residents of the town of Gerdiner, Maine set aside some time on a Saturday to pick up trash around the city in exchange for some free weed.
Led by Summit Medical Marijuana shortly after cannabis was legalized for recreational use back in 2016, the dispensary gave people two trash bags and promised them if they returned with them filled with litter they’d be gifted a free gram.
The initiative was so successful that the company nearly ran out of room in the dumpster for all the collected trash.
It’s not just businesses that are taking getting stoners up off their couches to collect trash either. Even Reddit is fighting the good fight against litter.
Last year, a member of the cannabis-focused subreddit group r/trees issued a challenge to fellow online stoners, posting a picture of a bag of trash they collected from their favorite smoke spot with the caption, “Cleaned up the smoke spot #StonerCleanUpInitiative.”
That post got more than 22,000 upvotes and inspired even more posts from the community helping keep things clean, even making the leap onto popular social media sites like Twitter and Instagram where smokers have posted pictures and videos of their clean up efforts both big and small.
With all of these examples of cannabis users making a difference for the environment,their communities and the health of the planet overall, maybe it’s time to retire that worn out “cannabis users are lazy” stereotype and start acknowledging that cannabis isn’t the only thing green about stoners.