Sam Belanger runs a CBD company, and is well aware that CBD is no longer the hottest product on the market. Amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, hand sanitizer might hold that title and like nearly everyone else on earth, Belanger couldn\u2019t find any.<\/p>\n
Belanger is the COO and co-founder of Green Ridge Biosolutions, a CBD company based in Ronan, Montana. Since opening for business, the company, which makes\u00a0CBD<\/a>\u00a0oils, topicals, and healthcare products, found that it ran through a fair bit of alcohol-based germ-killer during normal operations \u2014 and since the coronavirus pandemic widened, there was simply no more to be found on the commercial market.<\/p>\n So after a brief conversation with the company chemist, Green Ridge decided to start making its own, and is now supplying hand sanitizer to customers in multiple states as well as donating the badly needed stuff to local healthcare workers and first responders,\u00a0the Missoulian reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s been manufacturing and distributing its very own line of hand sanitizer \u2014 donating for free to health-care workers and police, and selling \u201cat cost\u201d to the general public in person and online \u2014 for the past week, according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n Green Ridge\u2019s pivot is a good-citizen turn, but it\u2019s also a demonstration.\u00a0Using a World Health Organization open-source formula and readily available ingredients<\/a>\u00a0(and making a substitution or two when certain components aren\u2019t available), other CBD companies \u2014 including those staring at unsold product, a vanished customer base, and a very uncertain future \u2014 might be able to follow suit and start producing (CBD-free) hand-sanitizer themselves.<\/p>\n As the Honolulu Star Advertiser reported on Monday,<\/a>\u00a0a Hawaii-based whiskey distillery (which just so happens to have a nearly unlimited supply of alcohol on hand, so long as there\u2019s corn to distill) and a medical-cannabis provider have both pivoted to hand-sanitizer production.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to start making alcohol solely for the purpose of making sanitizer,\u201d Eric Dill, a recently retired Marine who co-founded Ko\u2019olau Distillery, told the paper. \u201cIt was a tough decision, but it\u2019s for the greater good.\u201d<\/p>\n In the case of Aloha Green, the medical-cannabis company uses alcohol as a solvent in extraction and as an ingredient. Company spokesman Ty Cheng said that Aloha Green decided to get into the sanitizer game after that French perfume maker LVMH was pivoting to cleaning \u2014 and is producing the stuff in \u201cgallon buckets\u201d as well as filling 10,000 50-milliliter bottles the paper reported.<\/p>\n In this way, CBD and other cannabis companies with basic industrial extraction and production capacity might be able to both help reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus \u2014 \u201cflattening the curve,\u201d in health experts\u2019 parlance \u2014 as well as keep their ledger in the black.<\/p>\n As he told the Missoulian, Belanger realized something had to be done March 13, when he visited a brace of stores to stock up on hand sanitizer for the office and found none. His chemist also had initial bad news when considering how to start producing their own sanitizer when they realized that sourcing aloe vera might be impossible.<\/p>\n Turned out aloe vera is mostly just a \u201cthickening agent\u201d and the main ingredient is, of course, 99.9% rubbing alcohol. (Public-health agencies recommend<\/a>\u00a0that hand sanitizer be at least 60% ethanol or 70% isoproponal alcohol in order to destroy pathogens including the stubborn and highly contagious coronavirus, which has a lipid outer shell that is also highly susceptible to hot water and soap.) \u201cThen there\u2019s hydrogen peroxide, glycerol, and distilled water,\u201d he told the newspaper.<\/p>\n Green Ridge\u2019s product is \u201cmuch thinner\u201d than commercial hand sanitizer we remember from before the pandemic \u2014 almost a liquid \u2014 but \u201cworks just as well\u201d due to the alcohol content, according to the paper.<\/p>\n Company workers came in to \u201cwork overtime\u201d to start producing santiizer the very next day, he said, and merchants in the area, including a gas station and restaurants, which at least in Montana have stayed open, snapped up the initial order almost immediately.<\/p>\n Thus far, Green Ridge has produced 2,100 bottles, half of which have been sold online or at the company\u2019s headquarters, the other half donated to first responders, nursing homes and healthcare facilities. The company may be able to produce \u201ca few hundred thousand\u201d bottles of hand sanitizer, so long as Belanger can keep sourcing empty plastic bottles.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, are you searching for hand sanitizer rather than CBD right now? <\/p>\n The post CBD Company Pivots to Hand Sanitizer<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Sam Belanger runs a CBD company, and is well aware that CBD is no longer the hottest product on the market. Amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, hand sanitizer might hold that title and like nearly everyone else on earth, Belanger couldn\u2019t find any. Belanger is the COO and co-founder ofContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,136,13218,13342,170,1918,157],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41765,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41764\/revisions\/41765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: CBD Company Pivots to Hand Sanitizer<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"