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BHO & Dab carbon footprint (maybe)

Avinash.miles

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so i was just on vacation & saw some brochures touting small carbon footprint guided tours, got me thinking (and maybe im being naive @ this, you tell me)

Producing my own cannabis has always been about better control, higher quality lower costs, and it always seemed perfectly logical in similar ways to growing your own food or purchasing locally produced items and food. Obvious, right, less trucks carring products (cannabis being one of them) all over the country from canada or mexico or large domestic grows in other regions, less damage on environment (aka "carbon footprint", right?). Untill recently all I needed was soil (or other medium), fertilizer, equipment if indoors, and some rolling papers or locally blown glass.
It has always kinda bugged me about promix being of a canadian company, ive bought so much thru the years. Many nutrient companies are foreign as well and i feel (could b wrong) recently some american ones are starting to standout, like roots, humboltd, and ive been wanting to try dyna gro, its american owned right? plus I've always liked age old organics, made in middle america i believe, but its dilute.

so anyhow

:deadhorse:

as my tastes have matured to BHO, QWISO, dabs, errl, wax, budder, and all these things, ive noticed how much Butane, propane, pyrex, parchment paper, dry ice (part of my extraction process), titanium, even glass cuz i mostly enjoy fat joints of the finest of fine flowers. all that stuff is highly processed, and takes mining, multiple treks of trucking, factories to process and factories to package. and now i am (we are) buying that stuff up at rates unthinkable before i began dabbing like a dabbin fool.


I dont so much mind buying the glass extraction tubes and oil rigs, local glass artists deserve my money, they are "one of us", i dont mind passing my buck to the ones i know, like, and trust.

but all the rest?

am i just stating the obvious here? does any one else mind? worth it?
:thank you: :rant:
 

midwestHIGHS

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well sadly the days of horse and carriage are over, everything will be or has been transported by motor vehicles at some point. I'd say investing in tamisium extractor or designing your own butane recovery unit would be your best bet at enviromentally friendly bho extracting.

I try and recycle when ever possible and use products that have been made of recycled items.
 
How do you think the glass gets to the artists man? and the fuel they use for their torches? Shit, those tanks are as tall as me!!! You put too much thought into it i think, if you really wanted to change the size of your footprint you would stop buying things altogether, grow your own weed, make your own solvent (corn [grain alcohol]), and build your own house in the woods. Sounds pretty damn amazing, actually.
 

Avinash.miles

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one thing not brought up often (if at all ever) is the potential environmental damage from "blowing" butane".

please correct me if im wrong
but as i understand it butane is heavier than air, right? so when we blow butane it goes down, and get's dispersed, but it continues to sink, say if u do it in your garage w door open, or in back yard, tane goes into the alley or street, sinks into manhole covers, drains, into water supply ultimately.

if im understanding this potential correctly.... and i think of all the BHO being made....

this is something than really provides incentive for me to purchase a tamisium or similar butane recycling unit.

this is prolly common knowledge to some peeps, just haven't seen a discussion about it here at all.
 

MoeBudz^420

Active member
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Me too, all those nice green plants, doing what they do best.

Sucking up co2 and emitting O2. Where they are matters not.

It's what they do, and many on here are doing their part by planting a tree or ten...:rasta:


(edit: unsure how much co2 is created when i fire up the torch to dab oil)

Peace
 

midwestHIGHS

Member
Veteran
All serious bho makers should be looking into or already using closed loop extraction units, sitting in pools of butane from open blasting is not healthy nor safe. Esspecially when most are doing this multiply times a week. Not only that, but now you can use some proper instrument grade n-butane instead of stinky dirty lighter fluid refills with mercaptans and sulfur compounds.
 

gaiusmarius

me
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good points, i really don't like the idea of millions of people blasting can after can of butane through tube after tube. this can not be good for the environment? closed systems ala foaf is the only way to go if you are making oil regularly imo.
 

Avinash.miles

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this is one case where i would like to see the state step in and regulate the manner in which meds are made.....
they have over-regulated every other part of the industry here in co....
 

kmk420kali

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good points, i really don't like the idea of millions of people blasting can after can of butane through tube after tube. this can not be good for the environment? closed systems ala foaf is the only way to go if you are making oil regularly imo.

Hey bud, how's it going--
Here is a post from Gray Wolf that he posted in my thread about the dangers of Butane--
Closed system would save ya a lot of $$ in butane...but not seeing that it is an environmental hazard--

If you are dabbing at the correct temperature, the residual butane goes off as butane. It is only when you get it hot enough to oxidize that it breaks down into CO2 and water vapor.

Butane is just carbon and hydrogen, so it is of low toxity, and the MSDS gives the following:

ACGIH TLV (United States, 2/2010).
TWA: 1000 ppm 8 hour(s).
NIOSH REL (United States, 6/2009).
TWA: 1900 mg/m³ 10 hour(s).
TWA: 800 ppm 10 hour(s).
OSHA PEL 1989 (United States, 3/1989).
TWA: 1900 mg/m³ 8 hour(s).
TWA: 800 ppm 8 hour(s).

It is a simple asphixiant and is not a known carcinogen, mutgagen, or teratogen. The above levels required to be of concern, clearly demonstrate that the residuals likely found in a BHO are not toxic, but more of a nuisance from a taste and smell standpoint.

Even the taste and smell profile is low enough that they use butane as a propellent in some food containers.
 

TheChalice

New member
I'm sorry but I don't accept this Carbon Footprint crap. These terms are indoctrinated into us, and really are political agendas. More regulation=More control. Please don't fall trap to the environmental Radicals.
 

nakadashi

Member
"Carbon footprint" is almost a non-factor in blasting butane. It is a factor insomuch as yes it does take energy to distill butane and get it into the hands of consumers, but if you have a problem with that you may as well stop driving cars or flying on planes. Seeing as the butane used in blasting isn't even combusting, smoking that joint probably adds more to the "carbon footprint" than blasting, as CO2 is a greenhouse gas which is the byproduct of combustion.

By far the biggest offender in MMJ as far as greenhouse gases are concerned is the power consumed by indoor growing.
 

Gray Wolf

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For what it's worth, I'm helping write verbiage for Washington applications, and they specify a closed system for butane extraction.
 

gaiusmarius

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i don't fully accept all the co2 hysteria going on either. to me it seems madness to measure pollution by a harmless life giving gas called co2 that can be in the pollution too. to me it's just a way that gold miners can keep using mercury, chemical factories can keep producing carcinogens, chemical waste can continue to be dumped in the ocean, oil spills can continue to be hidden using 100 x more toxic substances to disperse the spilled oil. but oh no, what we breathe out and what plants breathe in, is what we have decided to regulate? go figure!

so when it comes to cans of butane being sprayed into the atmosphere, i don't really know how bad that is for the environment, but i do know that all these people blasting without fore thought are getting their houses blown up. also it seems GW's post quoted above is talking about butane residue in the extract, not about the butane that is getting released in to the atmosphere.
 

Chevy cHaze

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I'm with Gaiusmarius on this one.
I guess we don't have add to the CO2 craze here.
There are other fields where we can do much more, much easier.

And I'd like to give respect to avinash for beeing one of the few to actually think about all the things (not just yield & potency!) that come with what we all love doing, growing cannabis AND post it.

In these times of bigger, better, faster it's so easy to lose track of what the consequences are of what we're doing. A 1000W complete lighting kit for only 90bucks? a grow tent for only 59??
Funny though, that we only start thinking about other ways of lighting and growing in general than f.ex. with a few 1000w bulbs, when we have to deal with rising electricity costs and telltale electrical bills and heat signatures...
Come on people, not using sooo much ( of everything!) is perfectly doable without having to compromise your way of live and you don't need the long arm of the law to push you do it.
We are all so green (hehe) when it comes to cannabis, organic here, bio there, oh no! butane residues! etc...
shouldn't we start re modelling everything else after a more sustainable model as well? growing & living ?
I'm not going any further, or give examples, but when you start thinking about your impact on the planet- that's already a step in the right direction.
So thanks for that post avinash, even though it only filled two pages in more than a year...

take care everyone, peace out
 

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