Consumers are quickly becoming more mindful. 

They’re sharpening their canna knowledge and looking into companies with safe, organic, and sustainable practices. 

However, that can be pretty challenging, especially with the thousands of cannabis brands and cultivation facilities in North America. 

If you’ve stumbled into a Canadian dispensary, you might have noticed one company and its unique product packaging. 

The Green Organic Dutchman’s slanted packaging and kickass flower aren’t the only impressive conversation starters about this sustainable, certified-organic cannabis brand. 

The Green Organic Dutchman (TGOD) believes in setting the industry standard for organic farming practices. 

While that’s quite the challenging endeavor, the company strives to deliver products that aren’t only good for the consumer but for mother nature too. 

Its organic and sustainable approaches are bringing a new kind of cultivation process to the industry, and we can only hope more companies adopt such beneficial methods. 

You can trust that all of TGOD’s products are certified organic by Pro-Cert, a third-party organic accreditation body. 

Making a positive impact on consumers is one leading force behind TGOD’s practices, but its commitment to environmental, social, and governance priorities makes the company stick out like a sore, green thumb. 

TGOD’s cannabis grows in living soil with a thriving ecosystem of beneficial microbes, enzymes, and minerals. Some of those natural Canadian ingredients include glacial rock dust and, you guessed it, pure maple syrup. 

Another unique feature of The Green Organic Dutchman is its innovative product packaging. Before the buds are sealed into consumer packages, they’re cured for over ten days to build flavors and aromas. 

However, the curing process doesn’t stop there. TGOD’s dark green glass packaging sits at an angle, unlike your usual rounded glass jars. 

After tearing the label off, placing the tilted jar in the sun will continue the curing process through natural sunlight and the unique prism shape. This directly enhanced the terpenes and flavors within your precious bud. 

Canada’s leading organic and sustainable cannabis brand is rooted in the community and the environment. It believes in cultivating a way of life, not just growing certified organic cannabis. 

Clean living is a staple part of TGOD’s culture, and it believes in being a good neighbor to its community and creating a positive economic impact across local Canadian towns. 

TGOD’s community farm also produces fresh, organic foods that are given to local food donation programs. As of September 2021, the brand donated 32,628 lbs of food to local Hamilton food share programs. 

Regarding cultivation, TGOD cares about the future generations who will inherit our world and its beauty and flaws. 

For this reason, making a positive environmental impact through living soil, waste reduction, and water conservation is at TGOD’s core. 

It helps that all products from The Green Organic Dutchman are top-tier and accessible, but perhaps what’s going on behind the scenes is most important.

If you’re looking for a brand that cares for your experience, the community, and our precious earth, check out The Green Organic Dutchman and never look back. 

When did your company launch? What inspired the name, The Green Organic Dutchman?

The Green Organic Dutchman has been around since 2012, but really, we launched in the medical market in Winter 2018, followed by the recreational market a few months later. We’re committed to being the cannabis company that Mother Nature would choose herself. Great cannabis with a determined way to do it in an environmentally responsible way from seed to sale.

How has The Green Organic Dutchman evolved since launching? What products did you initially develop/sell, and what’s changed over time?

We’ve always grown and sold unique dried flower strains. However, as with any consumer organization, we’ve evolved over time. As a company, we’ve explored many categories, from edibles to high THC concentrates. Our other award-winning brands, like Highly Dutch, Cruuzy, and Ripple all have very unique, desirable products in multiple product categories, but the TGOD brand is most specifically focused on premium organic dried flowers. We offer it in both bud and pre-roll formats nationwide and with an eye to international export in the near future.

We have over 100 genetics available and our R&D process is more robust than the average path to customers. In order to be considered for the market, strains have gone through a rigorous series of Research & Development to understand their growth capability/complexity, cannabinoid potential, potency, appeal, uniqueness, etc. Before a strain ever sees the market, it’s been grown and tested multiple times and consumed by a research panel to ensure that we have the best cultivar hitting the market. A diverse group of people (with many having decades of success in the legacy market) help to make the right strain selections.

In 2021, we relaunched our TGOD flower process. All TGOD products are grown following their proprietary CleanCraft^TM process. It is the cultivation and processing steps that help us to deliver on the TGOD promise of bringing Canadians a certified organically grown product of craft quality. In addition, you can be reassured that TGOD flower is being produced in the most sustainable way for the environment. What does CleanCraft^TM mean to the typical customer?

• Higher potencies and higher terpene content: (all displayed on the label)
• Consistent quality, in every batch: Nothing to hide. Check out the full Certificates of Analysis and explore extended terpene and cannabinoid profiles, harvest dates, and more using our lot lookup on Cannametrics.

Why did you want your company to adopt sustainable and organic certified farming practices? Why was this eco-friendly approach so important to you?

Sustainability has been at the core of the company before we ever put a shovel in the ground. We wanted to build the World’s most environmentally responsible cannabis brand and that’s what we’ve done.  Our team takes environmental initiatives extremely seriously, including things that a customer will never see, like enhancements within our facility. We pride ourselves on being good neighbors and good citizens who are trying to leave the world in a bit a better place. Sustainable, organic farming isn’t the easy way to do things, but it’s the right way.

Some of our initiatives include;

Living Soil

• No synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides
• Where other cannabis growers spray their plants with different “foods” and fertilizers, we focus on feeding the soil with our ingredients. In turn, the plant is able to select exactly what pieces/nutrients it needs to grow its best as it does in nature. Think of our soil as a buffet for the plant.

Less Waste to landfill

• In addition to all the benefits of using living soil for our product (better taste, cleaner burn, grown like a plant should, etc), we are far more environmentally sustainable than traditional growers
• By choosing to grow in living soil, TGOD does not create 200,000 stone wool units of waste that typically goes to landfills every year. That is the approximate size of one football field (or)… the size of roughly 3 NHL hockey rinks!! It also equates to over 100,000 lbs of waste which are roughly equivalent to the mass of 170 grizzly bears (and/or) …the mass of 33 beluga whales.

Water Re-use

• 90% of the water is reused at our facility
• Our system collects rainwater (and melting snow) from the roof, recaptures basin and other areas
• Our ponds hold 5 million litres of water – equivalent to two Olympic-sized swimming pools!
• Gutters run along the roofs of the greenhouses and support buildings sending water through downspouts to the pond.
• The water from the pond is filtered, then naturally disinfected using UV light.
• Ready-for-use water is stored in one of seven clean, raw water tanks inside the buildings.

Sunlight

• We grow our plants using light from the sun along with broad-spectrum LEDs when the natural rays are low
• Paired with a LED lighting system that uses 40 percent less energy than standard high-pressure sodium lights, it gives us the ability and efficiency to grow at any time of the day, any time of the year while reducing decreasing our environmental footprint

Shipping Containers

• Our commitment to sustainability doesn’t stop at our products/facility, it continues into how we transport our products.
• For the cardboard cases that ship our products across the country, we only use recycled cardboard
• In 2021, we’ve reconfigured our shipping containers to find even greater efficiencies. Here are the weight breakdowns for old packaging minus the weight of new packaging. Overall, we will have reduced our paper packaging by 2,098.9kg (or 4,627lbs) – that’s 10 Grizzly Bears or 14000 hockey pucks worth of material we save

Community Farm

• When we’re done using our living soil in our greenhouse, it goes out to our community farm (on the property in Ancaster)
• 32,628 lbs of fruits and vegetables grown using organic methods for local food bank initiatives!
• Since 2018, our team has used our community farm in Ancaster to grow produce & donate to local food bank initiatives in the Hamilton region. In addition to growing produce, we’ve also raised over $14 000 for Neighbour to Neighbour to purchase over 140 000 lbs of food.
• Neighbour to Neighbour offers perishable and non-perishable food for registered families and offers drop-in prepared hot meals every week. In addition to being a Community Food center, they offer Family Services, Emergency Services, and Educational Support including a reading and math program and parent resource support. To learn more about our community partner, visit https://www.n2ncentre.com/

Power usage, we could say

• Our Ancaster facility uses a full-fledged microgrid that enables our greenhouse to be energy independent.
• The electricity is produced by a 5.2 MW cogeneration plant and a 2 MW diesel generator, as well as cold water, boasts an independent circuit that avoids waste.
• All the various systems work together to render the greenhouse operations more efficient and to create a virtuous cycle.
• The cogeneration by-products, on the other hand, are used in the greenhouse. The complexity of this microgrid provides for careful daily maintenance activities and meticulous control, to ensure that the entire system can run without any interruptions. This, as it operates in isolation mode and therefore without any connection to the power grid.

What led your company to create unique angled glass jars? Could you describe how the curing process works within these jars?

Due to the restrictive nature of the Cannabis Act, there aren’t many brand opportunities. However, the packaging is an area that allows for where a unique experience exists. We worked with our partners to design a proprietary, angled Green Glass Jar. In addition to a unique shape with a few benefits….

• Recyclable/Reuse – It’s glass so it’s more recyclable/reusable. We get photos from across Canada of what people use the jars for (spice holders, candles, etc)
• Function – Glass doesn’t have the same static charge problems as plastic. The static charge in plastic tends to pull trichomes away from the flower, but glass maintains better product integrity
• On-going Cure – Just like growing your flower at home and storing it in a mason jar, glass enables the process to continue to cure even as our product leaves the facility and makes its way to a store than a customer’s home
• Medical Patients – the angle in the jar allows the jar to sit in a one’s palm enabling a better opening experience for people with hand mobility issues

Could you tell us more about adding maple syrup to your “living soil”? Does this process directly enhance the flavor and aroma of your Organic Maple Kush strain?

Our Living Soil is comprised of over 15 natural ingredients, like crushed glacial rock, and maple syrup which are sourced from different regions in Canada. This isn’t a just case of trying to be very Canadian. Every ingredient has a very functional purpose. We use organic maple syrup in our living soil, sourced from Quebec. The maple syrup is not the type you’d see in fancy glass containers on your store shelves, this would be the lower grade that would otherwise go to waste. In line with our principles of sustainability, we find a use for this maple syrup! It’s used as a natural carbohydrate source in our living soil, and also encourages the production of potassium. Carbohydrates are an essential part of our living soil and our plants. Microorganisms within the soil break down the syrup and make it bioavailable for the plants to access through their root network.  They store energy/provide energy for cells to develop and are a key component for plants when they’re building out their structure during vegetation. Want to make them grow tall and strong? Make sure they have easy access to carbs! The potassium ensures all those carbs (and other nutrients) flow faster/more efficiently throughout the plant. When the microorganisms break down the syrup, potassium is created as a byproduct, so it’s a win/win. Other “living soil” growers have been known to use molasses which is typically a lower grade and thicker, it takes longer to break down in the soil and is less effective, but is used for a similar purpose. Molasses is slower… takes more time to become bioavailable for the plants. When growing organically, we can’t use chemicals to access these nutrients, so we have to do it the old-fashioned way as nature intended.

What experience do you strive to provide consumers with? What do you hope they take away from each purchase?

At TGOD, through any of our brands, we aim to provide a guilt-free moment of relief. Whether that’s mental or physical relief for medical patients..… relief from stress… relief for enjoyment….relief for escape…. relief from socializing. People can consume our products for enjoyment and know that their purchase decision is for an organization that is also environmentally and socially responsible.