Kickstart: Not everything is green in hemp marketing

It sounds like a perfect opportunity for collaboration with some hot topics in business, combining a booming business for legal marijuana packaging, recently legalized hemp farming in the U.S. and sustainability, but a leading supplier of recycled plastic containers for cannabis says to not believe hype about hemp-based plastics.

Wheat Ridge, Colo.-based Sana Packaging is warning its customers that most products made with hemp are actually a composite combining traditional resins and hemp-based reinforcement.

"These materials cannot be recycled and do not have any tangible sustainability benefits, so marketing petroleum-based hemp plastic products as 'sustainable' can be considered greenwashing," Sana Supply Chain Director Galen Kuney writes in a recent blog post.

Sana, which sources some of its recycled material from ocean-bound waste, does use hemp in some of its packaging but combines it with polylactic acid to ensure all material is bio-based. It is also tracking developments in using hemp — which has only been legal to grow in the U.S. since 2018 — as a base material for plant-based plastics.

"It is also important to emphasize that there will likely never be a 'silver bullet' when it comes to solving our plastic and packaging waste problems," Kuney writes. "The solution to these problems is a large-scale systemic change."

For those people who find retirement is overrated, our sister paper Crain's Cleveland Business is honoring eight business leaders in their 80s, including Tom Murdough, who opened his third rotomolding business, Simplay3, in 2016 after successfully founding and running Little Tikes and Step2.

Murdough said he has "insatiable desire to do new things."

"It's the drive to get even better with each one," Murdough said.

With Simplay3 of Streetsboro, Ohio, he has developed 60 new products, including lawn and garden items and mailboxes.

Is there a market for a different kind of Harry Potter sequel? Say, Ginny Potter and the Sustainability Spell?

Probably not, but the actress who played Ginny Weasley — who would grow up to marry the titular wizard (spoilers!) — in the movie version of the Harry Potter books, Bonnie Wright, is out with a book, Go Gently: Actionable Steps to Nurture Yourself and the Planet, focused on the environment.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Wright said her interest in waste, climate change and public policy began with seeing plastics in the ocean and on beaches. The book asks readers to make "better, more informed choices."