People are rightfully worried about pollution associated with single-use plastics, but I don’t think half of these people realize how essential PPE is in a hospital setting.
My mother is bed-bound and barely walks, and it’s not a “choice” to need gloves, bed pads, wipes, and other single-use products that are either made from plastic or contain plastics of some kind. Until chemists and manufacturers learn how to use hemp-derived polymers to replace plastic PPE gear, I will have to keep polluting out of sheer necessity. The same goes for nurses, doctors, CNAs, and other caregivers like myself. Despite what some will tell you on the internet, it’s important for marijuana growers to use PPE when they’re around plants in a commercial growing facility. This is particularly important for medical marijuana growing operations because failing to wear gloves when touching the plants can sometimes result in spreading fungal spores. Once a live cannabis plant gets fungal spores on it, the spores often take root and spread to the rest of the plant. It’s unfortunate to open a jar of cannabis flower buds only to smell a faint whiff of mold and mildew. It’s really frustrating, especially if it can be avoided by simply wearing the proper PPE supplies when handling live and harvested cannabis plants. Even if you’re focusing on concentrates, you don’t want that mold to be present in a batch of live rosin or a tincture for a medical marijuana patient. And at bare minimum, the cannabis dispensary should accept returns on any products that smell moldy the minute you open the jar and take a whiff of the aroma inside.