Epic Cleantec Announces San Francisco's First Approved Onsite Greywater Reuse System at Fifteen Fifty

The first-of-its-kind project will reduce the building’s potable water demand by up to 2.5 million gallons per year.

San Francisco-based water reuse technology company Epic Cleantec (or “Epic”) today announced that Fifteen Fifty – the luxury residential building in San Francisco by Related California, the West Coast affiliate of the nation’s largest privately-owned real estate firm, Related Companies (or “Related”) – is host to the city’s first approved and operational onsite greywater reuse system. Permitted and operated by Epic, the system can recycle up to 7,500 gallons of greywater per day, or 2.5 million gallons per year – equivalent to 19 million bottles of water.

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Fifteen Fifty building (Photo: Business Wire)

Epic Cleantec’s onsite water reuse approach captures and treats a building’s wastewater, purifying it to exceptionally high standards for reuse in non-potable applications including irrigation, cooling towers, toilet flushing, laundry, and more. Epic’s approach can help reuse up to 95% of a building’s water, delivering substantial savings on water and wastewater bills and helping cities preserve precious regional water supplies. The Fifteen Fifty installation captures, filters, and disinfects greywater from showers and laundry and rainwater from the roof, reusing the highly purified water for toilet flushing. This achievement comes as California grapples with an extended megadrought – the driest time in at least 1,200 years.

To commemorate the milestone, Epic Cleantec will host an event as part of the upcoming Greenbuild Conference taking place in San Francisco this year for city officials and leaders from across the real estate, sustainability, and civic worlds.

As a company that has always put sustainability at the forefront, Related minimizes water use, water cost and environmental risk across its portfolio and is a leader in building water capture and reuse systems in market rate multifamily and commercial office portfolios including the development of 2.3 million GSF of market rate residential water reclamation systems, one of the first in-building “blackwater” reuse systems for residential high-rise in the United States at Tribeca Green in New York City - part of a network that serves eight buildings and over 2,000 residents, as well as a campus-wide storm water harvesting system estimated to reuse close to 10 million gallons per year at Hudson Yards, the newest neighborhood on Manhattan’s West Side.

“Related remains committed to environmentally conscious real estate and is continuously looking for ways we can reduce our environmental footprint,” said Joe Walsh, Senior Vice President at Related California. “We are proud to partner with Epic Cleantec, a leader in water reuse technology and permitting, and their dedicated team to deliver the first approved and operational greywater reuse system in San Francisco.”

“We’re thrilled to partner with Related on this crucial milestone for urban sustainability and resiliency,” said Epic co-founder and CEO Aaron Tartakovsky. “We are seeing these periods of extended drought becoming more frequent and more prolonged, so the need to rethink our approach to water is more important than ever. As we grapple with the combined challenges of urban population growth, aging infrastructure, and a changing climate, onsite water reuse presents a more responsible and sustainable way to manage this limited resource.”

“Thanks to the city’s forward-thinking regulatory framework and innovative partners like Related and Epic, San Francisco is leading the nation in applying onsite water reuse technologies to diversify our water supply portfolio and enhance our water security,” said Paula Kehoe, Director of Water Resources at San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. “California is periodically subject to severe droughts, and climate change appears to be making this situation worse. It’s more important than ever to focus on creating buildings that are water-resilient and sustainable, like Fifteen Fifty.”

About Related California:

West Coast affiliate of Related Companies, is a fully integrated real estate firm that develops multifamily residential and mixed-use properties in California.

Since 1989, Related California has undertaken a range of transformational developments from best in class luxury high rise residential properties to the redevelopment of obsolete public housing, spanning a broad spectrum of urban infill, affordable, mixed-income and market rate multi-family developments. The company has a development portfolio of more than 18,000 residential units completed or under construction, and more than 5,200 affordable and 7,600 market rate units in pre-development.

Related California has a long history of community partnership, having collaborated with more than 40 municipalities and over 30 non-profit organizations throughout California, and has successfully developed and managed a broad range of property types throughout Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties. Related California has developed more than $8.3 billion in assets and has a track record of consistently developing communities that exceed industry benchmarks in design, construction, sustainability and property management. For more information about Related California, visit www.relatedcalifornia.com.

About Epic Cleantec

Epic Cleantec ("Epic") is a water reuse technology firm based in San Francisco, CA. The company deploys onsite water treatment and reuse systems into individual buildings or groups of buildings, converting building wastewater into treated water for non-potable applications, organic soil amendments, and recovered wastewater heat energy. Born out of initial work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge," Epic is now trusted by leading players in real estate including Crescent Heights, Westbank Corporation, and Related California. The company has been featured in The New York Times, CNBC, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, NBC Bay Area, and TechCrunch, among others, and was most recently named a Fast Company 2022 World Changing Ideas Award honoree in their water category, which highlights companies improving and solving water-related issues around the world. Learn more at www.epiccleantec.com.

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