As a healthcare professional providing cannabis as a treatment, most of your concerns probably focus on your patients. While CBD and medical cannabis are new for most patients, you can’t just focus on them. Prescribing cannabis will affect your entire practice, including how you dispose of waste. We’ve collected some helpful cannabis waste tips for healthcare professionals.
Wear PPE
Most healthcare practices already require employees to wear personal protective equipment appropriate to their roles within the practice. You’ll need to extend this PPE requirement to those handling cannabis waste. Different locations will have different regulations regarding exactly what PPE your disposal people should wear, but it’s a good rule of thumb to wear gloves. Research local laws so your practice can stay within compliance as you offer cannabis treatments to your patients.
Make Items Unusable
There are various CBD products you may prescribe to your patients depending on their health needs. If products expire or you must dispose of them for another reason, you must make them unusable. This is to prevent people from finding the products in your trash and using them or trying to sell them.
Mixing your CBD products with another type of waste is the best way to make the items unusable. For example, you could stick expired CBD patches onto cardboard for safe disposal. You could also mix CBD lotion with cat litter. The general rule is that the waste resulting from your mix must be at least 50 percent non-cannabis.
Dispose of Cannabis Safely
The disposal options for your cannabis waste will depend on the rules in your local area. This quick guide to cannabis waste disposal explains that the most common cannabis waste disposal options are landfills, incineration, composting, and digester systems. You can hire a waste management company to perform this disposal for you, or you can research local laws and dispose of the waste yourself. Just remember to wear the appropriate PPE and make the waste unusable, as we mentioned above.
These cannabis waste tips for healthcare professionals can help your practice stay in legal compliance. Healthcare practices are seeing many of their patients thrive with cannabis treatments, and knowing how to safely dispose of cannabis waste allows you to continue to provide those treatments. Every detail matters when it comes to cannabis, and we’re glad we can help you manage these details safely.
