Earth’s Best Friend:
How Cannabis Protects and Restores Our Planet

Of the top 15 environmental issues identified by Earth.org for 2025, cannabis contributes to mitigating four (27%) of them. And if mankind took full advantage of cannabis’s contents, this wonder-plant could help mitigate six (40%) of them. In honor of Earth Day, Head Magazine explores how cannabis helps Mother Earth and what other pressing issues there are this year for our planet.

Cannabis’s Active Solutions to Earth’s Problems

Issue: Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions

Solution: Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Absorption

When grown outdoors, cannabis can capture up to three times more GHG emissions than most trees can. According to Carbon Herald: “Industrial hemp farms are known to store between 8 to 15 tons of CO2 per hectare of cultivation. That is compared to forests that typically capture 2 to 6 tons of CO2 per hectare per year, depending on climate, region and growth stage.” Hudson Carbon reports that, whereas trees can capture about 6 tons of CO2 per year, cannabis can take in up to 16 tons – and be permanently encased, no less. This is because cannabis captures more than twice its weight in carbon, making it a carbon-negative crop.

When grown indoors, however, the benefits are outweighed by the costs. It takes a lot of electricity and natural gas to keep cultivation facilities at the optimal temperature and humidity levels. So, indoor growers end up burning a serious amount of fossil fuels and natural resources. In fact, Smithsonian estimates that growing 1 ounce of cannabis indoors can emit as much carbon as burning a full tank of gas. So, cannabis is on Mother Earth’s side when it’s in direct contact with Mother Earth, outside.

Issue: Soil Degradation

Solution: Soil Restoration

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction defines “soil degradation” as “a change in soil health status resulting in a diminished capacity of the ecosystem to provide goods and services for its beneficiaries,” as well as, “the decline in soil condition caused by its improper use or poor management, usually for agricultural, industrial or urban purposes.” When this has happened to soil, cannabis – typically referred to by its low-THC-cannabis name, hemp – can heal it regeneratively. (For every conceivable detail about regenerative hemp, consult the comprehensive resource “Hemp” by Project Regeneration.)

It accomplishes this through bio-accumulation and phytoremediation, a process explained in the Swiss trade journal “Plants” in a 2022 report on using industrial hemp (i.e., cannabis) to remove heavy metals from soil. Additional information on this process is available in a June 2024 “Chemosphere” article on using hemp to clean up contaminated soil affected by phyto-attenuation. Hemp can grow well in strongly contaminated soil due to it retaining most of the metals in the root.

Two multiyear trial studies on the effects of industrial hemp on soil health corroborate findings in trade journals, too. From 2017 to 2020, Rodale Institute’s experiment generated trend-proven data to bear out claims of cannabis’s bioregenerative abilities in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. Also, an experiment begun in June 2020, led by Stroud Water Research Center and involving partners in industry and academia, studied the cultivation, soil health and environmental impact of industrial hemp. Although an official report has yet to be released on this five-year effort, you can watch videos tracking their progress here.

Also of relevance to soil restoration, cannabis thrives almost everywhere. Accordingly, it requires no synthetic fertilizers or GMO seeds, as well as no pesticides because it’s naturally insect- and mold-resistant. It’s even used as a natural pesticide for other crops.

Issue: Fast Fashion and Textile Waste

Solution: Sustainable Fabric

British waste management company Business Waste, reporting that the world produces 92 million tons of textile waste annually, identifies three kinds of this waste. The first of these refers to old clothing that is discarded simply because it is no longer wanted, no longer fits or is damaged. The second is stock waste, referring to unsold and out-of-season items from retailers. The third is uniforms and workwear, categorized separately for the volume of worn out or old uniforms from schools and workplaces that are thrown in the trash.

The causes the company gives for this kind of waste are overproduction, over-procurement, over-stocking and overconsumption. In particular, “fast fashion,” referring to clothes deliberately made cheaply and poorly because the consumer expects to throw them away soon to buy more new clothes, drives this phenomenon. The UN Environment Programme estimates that today people buy 60% more clothes and wear them for half as long. Of the clothes that are thrown away, worldwide, 57% end up in a landfill, and 25% end up being incinerated. Clothes that are buried and are made of synthetic fibers (e.g., polyester, acrylic) take 80 to 800 times longer to decompose than natural fibers (e.g., hemp, cotton) do – and 60% of global apparel purchases are clothes made using synthetic fibers.

Here’s where cannabis can intervene. It bests synthetic fabrics and even some natural fabrics when it comes to climate-friendly properties and practices. As we explain in two articles on hemp clothing – “Move Over Barbie: Get Ready for Pot Girl Summer” and “Luxury Brands Keeping Hemp Hip” – cannabis’s eco-friendliness is superior to other fabrics for such reasons as:

• Using the same amount of land, hemp can produce 250% more fiber than cotton can and 600% more fiber than flax can.

• It takes 75% more water to grow cotton than to grow hemp. (Compare needing 10,000 liters of water to produce 1 kilogram of cotton with needing 2,123 liters of water to produce 1 kilogram of hemp.)

• Hemp does not pollute bodies of water with plastic microfibers, whereas polyester and other synthetic fabrics do.

Issue: Agricultural Pollution

Solution: Plant-Based Diet (Cannabis-Derived Options)

Agricultural pollution refers to the contaminants released into the environment from how mankind grows, raises, transports, processes and stores livestock, food crops, animal feed and biofuel crops. Fossil fuels (covered later) are often the usual suspects in this issue, but even during the Bronze Age, roughly 2,000 years ago, the agricultural practices employed by humans were having a negative, lasting impact on the environment. Today, as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NDRC) explains, large-scale industrial agriculture is taking a toll on the environment through such things as fertilizer runoff and methane emissions.

To the latter point, Earth.org reports that although beef makes up only 24% of global meat consumption, cattle ranching takes up 60% of the world’s agricultural area – and cow farts and burps have long been regarded as a bizarre if not notable contributor to ozone depletion. (ArcGIS even has an interactive map of cow-fart concentrations in the United States.) This is because the methane they release is a GHG that’s 28 times more potent than CO2 is, and it stays in our atmosphere for about 12 years.

One way to reduce a person’s environmental impact at the individual level is to reduce or eliminate your meat intake. Now, given that this article’s author is a vegan, ample evidence is required here, lest the author appear to be proselytizing through unscrupulous data manipulation. So, in addition to the numerous sources cited at the end of the article, here are seven detailed citations to assure readers of transparency.

• In the trade journal “Nature Food,” a July 2023 report from the University of Oxford states in the abstract: “Modelled dietary scenarios often fail to reflect true dietary practice and do not account for variation in the environmental burden of food due to sourcing and production methods. Here we link dietary data from a sample of 55,504 vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters with food-level data on greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, eutrophication risk and potential biodiversity loss from a review of 570 life-cycle assessments covering more than 38,000 farms in 119 countries. Our results include the variation in food production and sourcing that is observed in the review of life-cycle assessments. All environmental indicators showed a positive association with amounts of animal-based food consumed. Dietary impacts of vegans were 25.1% (95% uncertainty interval, 15.1–37.0%) of high meat-eaters (≥100 g total meat consumed per day) for greenhouse gas emissions, 25.1% (7.1–44.5%) for land use, 46.4% (21.0–81.0%) for water use, 27.0% (19.4–40.4%) for eutrophication and 34.3% (12.0–65.3%) for biodiversity. At least 30% differences were found between low and high meat-eaters for most indicators. Despite substantial variation due to where and how food is produced, the relationship between environmental impact and animal-based food consumption is clear and should prompt the reduction of the latter.”

• The United Nations’ 2019 report on climate change made the following case: “Animal-based diets have a high impact on our planet. Population growth and an increasing demand for meat and dairy results in the need to clear land and deforestation in order to make room for animal farms and growing animal feed. This results in loss of biodiversity, greater strain on resources like water and energy, among other adverse impacts. In the case of ruminant livestock such as cows and sheep, methane production, a greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide, exacerbates the problem. The issue extends to seafood where overfishing and degradation of our oceans from industrial activity and pollution put the future of our ocean at jeopardy. Switching to a plant-based diet can reduce an individual’s annual carbon footprint by up to 2.1 tons with a vegan diet or up to 1.5 tons for vegetarians.”

• A March 2021 interview with a research scientist at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change states: “The machines and fertilizers used on farms, and the trucks and ships that transport food, add greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere directly. Clearing forests and wetlands for farming has a more indirect effect, removing trees and soils that would otherwise store carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere. None of this is unique to meat—but meat demands more of all these resources than crops do. … A recent study showed that a pound of beef produces, on average, around 15 times as much CO2 as a pound of rice—and around 60 times as much as a pound of wheat, corn or peas. … So if you’re looking for the clearest way to have a more climate-friendly diet, cutting down on meat is likely your best bet. You won’t have to worry about exactly where and how your food was grown to be sure you’re making reductions in your greenhouse gas footprint. And the individual reductions can be significant: well over half of the CO2 emissions from the average American diet are a result of eating meat—and 45% come from beef alone. According to one recent study, going vegetarian for a year would save the average American over one metric ton of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of driving 2475 fewer miles.”

• The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change states: “In the food sector, an accelerated transition to balanced and more plant-based diets would not only help reduce the 55% of agricultural sector emissions coming from red meat and milk production (indicator 3.5.1), but also prevent up to 11·5 million diet-related deaths annually (indicator 3.5.2), and substantially reduce the risk of zoonotic diseases.”

• In “2024 Living Planet Report: A System in Peril,” The World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund) states: “Meat tends to have the highest environmental impact, partially because livestock produce methane emissions through their digestive process – something called enteric fermentation – but also because most meat comes from livestock fed with crops. This means the environmental footprint is not just the resources used for the livestock, but also those that go into producing the feed. Of particular concern are livestock intensively raised in small spaces. They live on diets of soy and grain, the production of which is driving conversion of nature in places like the North American Great Plains and the Brazilian Cerrado, and leading to biodiversity loss and increased greenhouse gas emissions.”

• A January 2022 article in Scientific American states: “Cutting meat consumption is a powerful and personal thing most Americans can do to tackle the climate crisis, and they can do it immediately. About 40 percent of greenhouse gases come from agriculture, deforestation and other land-use changes. Meat—particularly beef—drives climate change in two ways: first, through cows’ emission of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and second, by destroying forests as they are converted to grazing land. Despite the economic slowdown caused by the COVID pandemic, atmospheric greenhouse gas levels continued to rise in 2020, in large part because of an emissions increase in the Amazon as rain forests were changed into land for cattle to satisfy the global demand for beef. By eating less beef, we can start to decrease that demand.”

• A 2022 study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and published in “The Lancet” states: “Diets that are rich in animal-based foods threaten planetary and human health, but plant-rich diets have varied health and environmental effects. We aimed to characterise a healthy dietary index and three plant-based indices by their environmental impacts and associations with risk of cardiovascular disease. … We used data from a food-frequency questionnaire in the US-based Nurses’ Health Study II. Participants were categorised by quintiles of four dietary indices, including the alternative healthy eating index-2010 (AHEI), plant-based diet index (PDI), unhealthy PDI, and healthy PDI. We calculated environmental impacts (greenhouse gas emissions and irrigation water, nitrogenous fertiliser, and high-quality cropland needs), and relative risks (RRs) of cardiovascular disease from 1991–2017, comparing quintiles. We included 90 884 participants in the health-impact analysis and 65 625 participants in the environmental-impact analysis. Comparing the top and bottom quintiles, higher AHEI scores were associated with a decreased cardiovascular disease risk (relative risk 0·77 [95% CI 0·66–0·89]); 30% lower greenhouse gas emissions (Q5 2·6 kg CO2 equivalent vs Q1 3·7 kg CO2 equivalent); and lower fertiliser, cropland, and water needs (all ptrends<0·0001). Similarly, the highest healthy PDI and PDI quintiles were associated with a decreased cardiovascular disease risk (healthy PDI 0·71 [0·60–0·83] and PDI 0·74 [0·63–0·85]) and lower environmental impacts (PDI water needs ptrend=0·0014; all other ptrends<0·0001). Conversely, the highest unhealthy PDI quintile had a higher cardiovascular disease risk compared with the lowest unhealthy PDI quintile (1·15 [1·00–1·33]; ptrend=0·023) and required more cropland (ptrend<0·0001) and fertiliser (ptrend=0·0008). Dietary patterns that are associated with better health had lower greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogenous fertiliser, cropland, and irrigation water needs. Not all plant-based diets conferred the same health and environmental benefits. US dietary guidelines should include nuanced consideration of environmental sustainability.”

If someone chooses to alter their diet’s ratio of meat-to-plants such that plants are the larger portion, cannabis is a prime example of a diverse source of nutrition, as it’s a legit “superfood.” To survive, the human body needs nutrients, which are what promote growth and provide nourishment while maintaining life. Those that need to be consumed in greater quantities (e.g., fat, protein, carbohydrates) are labeled macronutrients, and those that need to be consumed in smaller quantities (e.g., calcium, zinc) are labeled micronutrients. Raw cannabis, especially its seeds, contains numerous nutrients in both categories – thereby conferring “superfood” status upon it. For more details, read our article on the numerous ways you can add raw cannabis to your diet (without getting high, by the way).

Cannabis’s Potential to Do More for Earth

Issue: Fossil Fuel Dependence

Potential Solution: Hemp Biofuel

According to Statista in September 2024, fossil fuels (crude oil, natural gas and coal) account for more than 80% of all primary energy consumed worldwide. The status of fossil-fuel dependence is clear when, as a 2022 analysis in “Energy, Sustainability and Society” reports, a bounded economy (local, regional or national) has its economic development primarily driven by the extraction of fossil fuels.

Brookings Institute research analyst and fellow Samantha Gross explains that we trap ourselves in this state of dependency largely for political reasons: “Science clearly tells us that we need to remake our energy system and eliminate CO2 emissions. However, in addition to the engineering challenges, the nature of climate change makes it politically challenging to deal with as well. Minimizing the impact of climate change requires re-making a multi-trillion-dollar industry that lies at the center of the economy and people’s lives. Reducing humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels requires investments here and now that provide uncertain, long-term benefits. These decisions are particularly difficult for politicians, who tend to focus on policies with immediate, local benefits that voters can see.” The National Wildlife Federation points out that each year, the U.S. provides billions of dollars in subsidies to companies in the fossil fuel sector, so the money backs up the political theory.

In Head Magazine’s historical analysis of what transpired in the United States to shift the public’s opinion of cannabis from being a great thing to have to being something you should be arrested for, we examine hemp biofuel’s near brush with industry. Standard Oil (Mobil/Chevron today) owner John D. Rockefeller viewed hemp-derived ethanol, made by fermenting the starches and sugars in hemp biomass, as competition for his company’s petrol. Henry Ford claimed that hemp ethanol, which was made from renewable resources, was more cost-effective and sustainable than traditional fuels were, and that it produced fewer emissions. He tested this fuel his Soybean car, a 1941 Model T made entirely of plant-based plastics (notably, hemp) and built to run on hemp-derived ethanol. Its engine had been designed in collaboration with Rudolf Diesel, the German mechanical engineer who invented the fuel named after him. With the hemp ethanol, the vehicle’s fuel consumption was an amazing 40 miles per gallon. By comparison, the average fuel efficiency of 1940-model-year cars was 10 to 15 miles per gallon.

Imagine how different the planet’s conditions would be today if hemp had replaced crude oil.

Issue: Plastic Pollution

Potential Solution: Hemp Bioplastics

Logistically, hemp bioplastics can’t render a plastic-free world anytime soon, as the current production facilities and specialized recycling facilities are lacking. Scientifically, however, cannabis-derived plastics are indeed capable of wholly replacing fossil-fuel-derived plastics. If this were to happen, the accumulation rate of plastic-driven pollution throughout Earth’s air, land and sea would go from warp speed to slow motion. Read the full story we published about this, “Plastic Pollution and the Weed Solution,” for a thorough analysis.

What’s Left to Fix?

The remaining issues that cannabis can’t help solve, again referring to the top 15 issues identified for 2025 by Earth.org, are the following.

Issue: Food Waste

It would be great if chronic and the munchies could save the planet, but the majority of food waste occurs either in post-harvest processing (developing countries) or at the retail and consumer levels (developed countries). Earth.org identifies two categories: loss, which refers to food lost during the early stages of production; and wastage, which refers to food perfectly fit for human consumption that is simply discarded. Even Mary Jane can’t force anyone to appreciate food if they’ve got it, so this one, tragically, is beyond cannabis’s superpowers.

Issue: Biodiversity Loss

When species work together to support life and ecological balance on Earth, you have what’s known as biodiversity – or, more poetically, the “web of life.” Earth.org identifies three types: genetic diversity, which is limited to one species (e.g., humans with small differences in their DNA bases); species diversity, which refers to the number and distribution of the species in a habitat (community or region); and ecosystem diversity, which is the variety of habitats and species in a geographic area.

The World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) emphasizes the importance of biodiversity by pointing out that this is what provides us with food, fuel, medicine and the air we breathe. In WWF’s “2024 Living Planet Report: A System in Peril,” the foundation states that since 1970, wildlife populations have declined by 73% – among other alarming statistics. Given that biodiversity loss is caused by pollution, overfishing, deforestation and land exploitation, cannabis isn’t in a position to help out beyond its aforementioned capacity to reduce GHG emissions.

Issue: Deforestation

The term “deforestation” refers to the process of clearing or removing forests or woodlands. Worldwide, the equivalent of 29 football fields (27 soccer fields) of forests are lost – per minute! The typical drivers of deforestation are agriculture, logging and urbanization. However, the report “2030 Global Forest Vision: Priority Actions for Governments in 2025,” issued in March 2025 by Forest Declaration Assessment, emphasizes the role of international trade, too. Thus, cannabis can’t save the day here either.

Issue: Air Pollution

Although cannabis helps to fight GHG emissions, it can’t mitigate the broader phenomenon of air pollution – which exists both outdoors and in households, by the way. The World Health Organization describes air pollution as “contamination of the indoor or outdoor environment by any chemical, physical or biological agent that modifies the natural characteristics of the atmosphere.” According to the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the University Medical Center Mainz, “the global, public loss of life expectancy caused by air pollution is higher than many other risk factors such as smoking, infectious diseases or violence.” A huge problem, to be sure, but not one cannabis can fight.

Issue: Melting Ice Caps and Sea Level Rise

Since the year 2000, glaciers have been losing an average of 273 billion tons of ice per year, according to a study published in February 2025 in “Nature.” Between 2012 and 2023 alone, the amount of ice being lost jumped by 36%, showing an alarming acceleration of this environmental issue. The European Space Agency quotes an accomplished glaciologist when explaining the impact this has had on sea levels: “To put this in perspective, the 273 billion tonnes of ice lost annually amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, assuming three litres per person and day.” That’s what’s going out into the planet’s bodies of water; here again, cannabis can’t lend a hand.

Issue: Ocean Acidification

As defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), ocean acidification occurs when the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, causing  a fundamental chemical change. One of the factors NOAA attributes this to is GHG emissions, which is something cannabis fights, as was previously explained. Also, ocean acidification ties partly into the effects of plastic pollution, in which case cannabis truly could help to mitigate it – but only if hemp bioplastics replace traditional plastics. However, “Frontiers in Marine Science” identifies numerous other contributing factors, none of which relates to cannabis’s Earth-friendly properties. So, this environmental problem doesn’t count as one of the issues that cannabis could help fix.

Issue: Food and Water Insecurity

Although not directly linked to solving this problem, cannabis does help alleviate food insecurity through its soil restoration, as was previously described. Earth.org reports that every year, 68 billion tons of topsoil is eroded every year at a rate 100 times faster than it can naturally be replenished. So, the land needs all the help it can get – and cannabis is there for it. But much else remains to be done to fix this problem.

Issue: Overfishing

Although not at the industrial scale, cannabis is actually used to bait certain fish species, notably bass. Hemp seeds possess cannabis’s terpenes and other organic compounds, and the trademark fragrance of the plant attracts fish, according to Bass Angler. It has the added advantage (for the fishermen, not for the fish) of leaving a slick film on the water’s surface that may keep the fish in the same area. As environmental crises go, that’s not a great look for cannabis – but it can’t help being such a versatile natural resource.

Issue: Cobalt Mining

Cobalt is a key component of the battery materials that power electric vehicles, so the demand for it continues to surge, and the environmental crisis accompanying it hangs in the balance. For now, all that can be said here is that cannabis is somewhat adjacent to a to-be-discovered solution to this environmental problem.

In one study in Poland that was published in “Industrial Crops and Products” November 2021, researchers used hemp (i.e., cannabis) to restore minesoil organic matter. From the abstract: “We propose here the use of fiber hemp (Cannabis sativa) introduced into post-mining area to be a pioneering plant that can be used for reclamation of the soil degraded by opencast lignite mining. Five years experiment carried out on the total surface of 7.5 ha showed usefulness of hemp as a species used for rebuilding the soil organic matter. By plowing in the whole biomass of cultivated plants it was delivered to the topsoil, accelerating the restoration of the humus layer. Organic matter content of the soil increased from 0.87 % to 2.4 %. In the same time the content of important macroelements like phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and manganese reached the levels above minimum for agricultural soil, while heavy metals (Cu, Zn, Fe) did not exceed an acceptable level.”

Conclusion

Cannabis is reporting for duty and ready to serve, if we only let it. Although we’re allowing it to do its thing in some areas, we owe it to the planet and our current and future generations to take advantage of the solutions that exist but are simply being ignored – willfully or ignorantly. Earth Day is a chance to spread the word about these solutions, so keep the conversation going out there. You might just find the right person at the right time and set change in motion.

The information in this article and any included images are for educational purposes only. This information is neither a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional legal advice or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about laws, regulations or your health, you should always consult an attorney, physician or other licensed professional.

Kathleen Hearons is a writer, editor, linguist and voice over actor from Los Angeles. She specializes in creative writing and research-intensive analysis and reporting.

 

 

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