Back in June of 2022, the City of San Francisco flagged the Ambulatory Care Center (ACC) at 400 Parnassus for having excessive contamination of its waste streams. As a result, UCSF Health was required to address the issue of incorrect compost, recycling, and landfill sorting. Since then, the ACC has undergone a total waste transformation.
To begin, the UCSF Health sustainability team did a deep dive into the waste management system at the ACC. They assessed each clinic, completed walkthroughs, spoke with leadership, and audited bins to see how contaminated the waste streams were. This assessment uncovered that the ACC clinics had few to no compost and recycling bins, resulting in high contamination rates.
After providing each clinic with the needed bins, the staff participated in waste sorting training and completed end audits. Now, waste audits are a monthly occurrence, and clinic leadership receive sustainability reports to encourage continuous proper sorting.
Control audits were completed in January of 2023, end audits were completed in April of 2023, and the updated contamination percentages for this report were pulled from the November 2023 monthly waste audit, six months after the end of the project.
The results of the audits show that both the landfill and recycling contaminations are still below the control audits. The compost contamination on the other hand rose to 5%, yet was an expected outcome, as adding more bins leads to more opportunities for contamination. Although the contamination percentages have gone up, the recycling and compost continue to be below the City of San Francisco’s maximum allowable contamination percentages, which are 10% for recycling and 5% for compost.
The ACC’s recycling revolution project was a huge success when it first ended, and continues to be one. The UCSF Health sustainability team is using the ACC success story as a framework for future recycling projects.
ACC clinics take control of waste contamination.
