Welcome to Weedville: Pot Grower Buys Entire US Town to Create ‘Cannabis-Friendly’ Off-Grid City

Nipton, CA — In an unprecedented and highly unusual move, American Green Inc., a cannabis grower and product maker, plans on attracting new customers in California — by buying an entire town.

The tiny desert town of Nipton, California was acquired by the company for $5 million. According to the company, they plan on investing an additional $2.5 million in the town to turn it into a pot-friendly tourist destination. Among other smaller buildings, the town includes 120 acres of land, a general store, a hotel, a school, and mineral baths.

According to a report out of Bloomberg:

American Green, based in Tempe, Arizona, will use the existing structures and build new ones — powered by renewable energy — to revitalize the town, said project manager Stephen Shearin. Ideally, the outpost will spawn imitators, he said.

“We thought that showing that there was a viable means of having a cannabis-friendly municipality and further making it energy independent could be a way of really inspiring folks to say, ‘Why can’t we do that here?’” he said.

The move shows how far marijuana has moved out of the shadows despite an uncertain federal policy outlook. With pot now legalized for recreational and medical use in California, Nevada and six other states, one in five American adults can consume the formerly taboo plant as they please. That’s created an opportunity for companies to try to make cannabis a more mainstream product.

The notion of pot growers and the cannabis industry helping the environment and creating and fostering sustainable products is nothing new. However, the idea of turning entire towns into off-grid marijuana-friendly communities is certainly revolutionary.

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Pamela Johnston, senior vice president at Electrum Partners, a cannabis industry advising and consulting firm, said restrictions on pot use and availability have limited tourism-related activities, but predicted it will be on par with other types of travel, according to Bloomberg.

However, with legal weed expanding throughout the country, marijuana tourist destinations will likely flourish.

“But before we blink, it will soon outpace other niche affinity travel” like wine, Johnston said.

Unlike, wine, however, cannabis has other uses outside of recreation. Some of the 120 acres of the town’s property could be used to farm hemp which could then be used to create sustainable products like hempcrete and hemp plastics.

Given the amount of petroleum based plastics currently wreaking havoc on the environment, the idea of off-grid, self-sustainable towns popping up to produce environmentally friendly products with no footprint is inspiring, to say the least.

“We are excited to lead the charge for a true green rush,” American Green’s president David Gwyther said in a statement to Time.

“The cannabis revolution that’s going on here in the US has the power to completely revitalize communities in the same way gold did during the 19th Century.”

Nipton — which boasts a population of around 20 people — sits on the edge of California on its Nevada border. It was founded and built during the gold rush.

“The gold rush built this city,” he adds. “The green rush can keep it moving the way people envisioned it years ago.”

However, just like all peaceful and sustainable movements to move off-grid and function outside of the federal government’s grip on society, there is a very real risk of the drug warriors moving in to stomp it out.

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Even though Obama promised that the federal government would stop the crackdown on states with legal pot, it still happened. Now, with Jeff Sessions, tyrant extraordinaire, as the Attorney General, things appear to be even more bleak, as this insane pot nazi is attempting to blow new air into the already dead and deflated war on drugs.

However, American Green is not going to take it lying down and plans to move forward while hoping for the best.

As the Free Thought Project reported today, Americans are on their side and Jeff Sessions is a dinosaur. A paradigm shift, according to a new Harvard-Harris Poll, is taking place in the country. For the first time, 86 percent of Americans approve of some form of legal cannabis.

Soon enough — as long as good people continue to break bad laws — we could be making that weekend drive to Weedville in our cars made out of cannabis.

IKEA Launches Sustainable DIY Indoor Garden

IKEA continually proves itself to be one of the most environmentally-friendly companies on the planet. The Swedish home furnishings retailer introduced a hydroponic garden last year that allows you to grow fresh produce in your home without any soil or gardening experience, and the company ditched Styrofoam packaging for biodegradable packaging that you can actually put in your garden to nourish your plants.

The latest sustainable endeavor by IKEA is the Growroom, a spherical, multi-tiered indoor garden that you can build at home because the design is open-source. This thing is so big, it’s actually designed to sustainably grow enough food to feed a whole neighborhood.

Space10, the IKEA lab that explores sustainable solutions for future urban living, says in the open-source plan:

“It is designed to support our everyday sense of well-being in the cities by creating a small oasis or ‘pause’ architecture in our high paced societal scenery and enables people to connect with nature as we smell and taste the abundance of herbs and plants.”

The beauty of the Growroom is that fruits and vegetables can be grown in abundance virtually anywhere, including urban dwellings. In cities where there are food desserts, the Growroom allows communities to work together to create and strengthen bonds, provide healthy food, and teach children about nature.

Space10 continues:

“Local food represents a serious alternative to the global food model. It reduces food miles, our pressure on the environment, and educates our children of where food actually comes from. The challenge is that traditional farming takes up a lot of space and space is a scarce resource in our urban environments.”

Once completed, the garden measures 2.8 by 2.5 meters (9 by 8.2 feet). Water and light easily reach the growing fruits and veggies through the interlocking pieces without leaking through to the other side, so you won’t have mess after tending to your plants. Its Creative Commons license means you can keep adding to the design.

“The pavilion, built as a sphere, can stand freely in any context and points in a direction of expanding contemporary and shared architecture.

The overlapping slices ensure that water and light can reach the vegetation on each level, without reaching the visitor within and thereby functions as a growth activator for the vegetation and shelter for the visitor.”

Yup, it’s big enough that you can sit in it.

Source: IFLScience!

Oh, and about that open-source design… It was created that way with smaller communities in mind, according to Space10:

“It doesn’t make sense to promote local food production and then start shipping it across oceans and continents.”

If you’re interested in building your own Growroom, you can find the design on Space10’s site.

Source:

Space10

Image Source:

IFLScience!

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.