Mike Buzalka | Sep 09, 2019
The state of California is on the forefront of dealing with recycling and food waste issues, efforts that are pursued even more vigorously by some localities such as the city of San Francisco.
That is particularly relevant to University of California-San Francisco Health (UCSF), as this summer the city put into effect a regulation requiring concerns like UCSF to divert organic waste and recyclable materials from landfills. Coming next year is a state mandate that will require UCSF to begin implementing programs that will allow it to recover 20% of edible food waste by 2025.
The facility is getting a jump on all this with a food recovery program that uses a local non-profit called Copia to collect its unused but edible food and deliver it to various social service venues. While food recovery isn’t unusual, Copia’s approach to pickup and delivery is.
“When they [Copia] first started, they were hiring their own drivers and trying to coordinate all the logistics,” explains Dan Henroid, director of nutrition & food services for UCSF Health, “but they realized pretty quickly that they couldn’t scale the business [doing it that way] so they started contracting with services like DoorDash.”
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