From campus to community: Sustainability at the heart of UC Davis Health
(SACRAMENTO)
At UC Davis Health, sustainability goes beyond environmental efforts to promote a wider dedication to community health through its Anchor Institution Mission.
Employees received information on campus sustainability efforts at a recent event.
Kristina Bair is the director of the UC Davis Health Sustainability Committee, which collaborates across the organization to develop a resilient, sustainable health care model that emphasizes the connection between human and planetary health through conscious actions, community involvement, and education. This includes advancements in energy efficiency, waste reduction, transportation, purchasing, design and construction, and clinical care.
These initiatives, Bair said, are helping UC Davis Health reduce its environmental footprint while gaining national recognition for its sustainability leadership. Overall, these efforts align with the Anchor Institution Mission, which, among other goals, promotes sustainability to support long-term environmental, social, and economic well-being.
Recent accolades in sustainability include:
SMUD’s First Clean Power City Business Champion Award recognizes the partnership between SMUD and UC Davis Health in the energy-efficient design and planning of 48X and the Folsom Medical Care Clinic. The design innovations at these two facilities generated nearly $200,000 in incentives, which served as seed money for future sustainability efforts.
The Arbor Day Foundation named UC Davis Health a 2025 Tree Campus for its dedication to using trees and green spaces to promote human health, environmental sustainability, and community well-being. The Tree Campus recognition honors health care institutions that intentionally manage and invest in trees as part of a broader strategy to heal environments and build climate resilience. At UC Davis Health, this effort includes expanding the campus tree canopy, planting drought-tolerant vegetation, eliminating synthetic herbicides, and hosting community tree-planting events.
2025 Green Health Emerald Award from Practice Green Health, which recognizes outstanding hospitals with advanced sustainability programs. UC Davis Health also earned 2025 Circles of Excellence recognition in five categories: food, sustainable procurement, water, transportation, and green building.
Employees plant trees on the Sacramento campus.
Bair emphasized the importance of collaboration in this success.
“At UC Davis Health, sustainability is mainly about protecting and enhancing health. The progress we’re seeing comes from teamwork across our organization. From energy conservation and building design to food recovery and waste reduction, our teams are developing creative ways to lower our environmental impact while building a healthier, more resilient health care system for our community,” she said.
Examples of this essential collaborative work include:
UC Davis Health’s Grounds Department planted over 500 trees in 2025. This helps the local community by improving air quality and providing more shade in public spaces. It also reduces the heat island effect on the UC Davis Health campus and the surrounding Sacramento area.
UC Davis Health’s Food and Nutrition Services donates surplus prepared food through our partnership with COPIA, a resource that links excess food to those in need. In the 2024-2025 fiscal year, UC Davis Health donated 16,898 pounds of food. This helps fight food insecurity in our community and reduces the amount of organic waste sent to landfills. Landfills contribute to 21% of the state’s methane gas emissions, a by-product of organic waste that is 72 times more potent than carbon dioxide emissions.
Team members received their free flatware at a recent utensil distribution day.
Bair noted that one of the Sustainability Committee’s current projects focuses on reducing single-use plastic waste, including the design and distribution of a reusable utensil kit for UC Davis Health employees.
The Reusable Flatware Initiative launched at Scrubs Café in 2025 and distributed over 4,000 kits. Consequently, almost 9,000 fewer disposable utensils were purchased than the previous year. The project will carry on in 2026 with distributions at the Lawrence Ellison Café in the Ambulatory Care Center.
One of the Sustainability Committee’s long-term goals is a future free of fossil fuels. The plan is to electrify the central plant by 2045 and purchase clean energy through SMUD. This would make UC Davis Health a zero-net-emissions campus, reducing emissions by 90% while enhancing air quality on the campus and in the surrounding Sacramento community.
The Sustainability Committee will organize month-long Earth Day events for staff and students this April, including an Earth Month Bingo Challenge, a Light Rail Field Trip with the Green Commuter Program team, and an in-person UC Davis Health Sustainability Walking Tour with Bair and Sustainability Officer Sarah Janus. Earth Month activities aim to encourage the UC Davis Health community to make positive changes that directly benefit public health.
Additional information
Want to see UC Davis Health sustainability in action? Take the Virtual Walking Tour!
If you have questions about sustainability efforts at UC Davis Health, contact Kristina Bair at klcullen@health.ucdavis.edu.
UC Davis Health’s Anchor Institution Mission operates in full compliance with California’s Proposition 209, which prohibits discrimination against or giving preferential treatment to any individual or group in public employment, public education, or public contracting on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, national origin, or other protected identities. The AIM initiative also abides by federal anti-discrimination laws.
