Image: Evergreen Cannabis Society owner Mike Babins reaches into the packaging-recycling bin in his store | Rob Kruyt)   “We had an inspector in for our regular biannual inspection,” Evergreen Cannabis Society owner Mike Babins told Business in Vancouver.   “He said, ‘Technically that is considered open packaging so you can’t have it in here.’”   Babins then came up with a temporary workaround to have the recycling bin, which is co-branded with his own logo, outside his store.   He then phoned the British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch and prompted its senior corporate policy analyst, James Roy, to speak with executives at the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch.   “You are good to go with putting the recycling box in your store where customers can deposit their used cannabis packaging, provided there is never any inducement to purchase wholesale product from the [licensed producer] sponsoring the box,” Roy then wrote to Babins in a July email.   Babins said that when he first installed TerraCycle’s large cardboard box and plastic liner in his store, he confirmed with the company that it would accept all companies’ packaging – not just packaging from products that were made by Tweed.   Other cannabis-store owners are glad that the situation has been worked out.   (Image Muse Cannabis president Geoff Dear stands outside his cannabis store on south Granville Street | Rob Kruyt)   Muse Cannabis Store president Geoff Dear told BIV that as soon as his store opened on south Granville Street earlier this summer, customers were asking how they could return packaging.   “They also asked why the packaging is this way,” Dear said. “We have to do a lot of customer education.” •