Anyone who’s worked at a dispensary or as a grower or simply just uses cannabis on a regular basis recognizes that it’s a pretty sensitive plant. Even after the curing process, a lot of care should go into preserving the product, especially when packaging for sale. Emerging from the black market days, some of us are used to getting our cannabis in sandwich bags, tinfoil or even plastic Easter eggs. It would be a tense trip home, leaking that unmistakable aroma as we hurry toward the sanctity of our mason jars. As the cannabis industry becomes more professional, sandwich bags and tinfoil aren’t really cutting it. They barely were to begin with. With this professionalism comes a need to evaluate how to best package marijuana so that it can reinforce branding to a customer in a dispensary setting yet maintain discretion upon their exit, not to mention preserve the freshness of the product. As the food industry has already illustrated, Mylar bags are the way to go.
The History of Mylar
Mylar is actually a trade name for a material called biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate (boPET) that was first created in the mid-1950s and was even used in some NASA missions. There are a number of applications that rely on the qualities of Mylar but the one with which you were probably initially familiarized is food packaging. It’s these same properties that make Mylar bags so valuable in the cannabis industry as hygienic packaging for edibles, concentrates and especially raw bud.
The Importance of Thick Mylar
When clients come to us about our Mylar packaging options, we assure them that our Mylar bags are approximately 5.1mil thick. Plastic is a breathable material but using Mylar with a 5.1mil girth dramatically cuts that air transfer. While a dog could smell the package’s contents, a human probably could not unless s/he was bionically enhanced or something. But as long as we’re not in a science fiction movie, someone is a lot more likely to smell leaking odor from a medicine bottle than a Mylar bag. Of course, this specific thickness of material also keeps the contents fresher for a longer period of time which is perfect for spending a bit of time in the dispensary.
The Benefit of Aluminum in Mylar Bags
A distinctive feature of Mylar is that it’s metallized plastic. You’ll often notice a metallic appearance to Mylar bags owing to a layer of aluminum that lends to an opacity which is great for many foods as well as cannabis. THC has been found to be sensitive to ultraviolet light, resulting in degradation. While Mylar isn’t necessarily lightproof, the opacity is definitely preferable to translucent packaging. The opacity also lends to the overall discretion inherent to Mylar packaging. In addition, the aluminum layer adds extra strength to a Mylar bag so that rips and tears that could compromise the product are far less frequent.
Mylar bags are also easily customized by designers, making them an attractive choice for marijuana businesses. Along with the relative affordability of Mylar packaging, a host of attractive features including opacity, odor reduction and preservation of freshness make it an obvious choice for small to mid-sized marijuana businesses and dispensaries who want to showcase their products in sophisticated ways.
