Humboldt County’s first residents hailed from the Yurok, Karuk, Wiyot, Chilula, Whilkut and Hupa tribes, among others. They settled on the coast and along the banks of the Trinity and Klamath rivers. The county was created in May 1853 and derives its name from Humboldt Bay, which was “discovered” by a sea otter hunting party in 1806 and rediscovered in 1849. Douglas Ottinger and Hans Buhne entered the bay in 1850 and named it in honor of naturalist and explorer Baron Alexander von Humboldt.
Del Norte County has been home to the Yurok and Tolowa peoples for thousands of years. Legendary explorer Jedediah Smith is credited with being the first non-native to enter the region, in 1828. Gold strikes on the Klamath and Smith Rivers in the 1850s led to the settlement of the county, which was created in March 1857. Its name, meaning “the north,” is derived from its position in the northwest corner of the state.
As California watches the price of gasoline creep toward $4 a gallon, Footprint Recycling is pumping up its Humboldt County biodiesel production.
Andrew Cooper began making biodiesel out of waste vegetable oil in 2004 with limited funds and a dream to make an alternative fuel for as many people as possible. When the Times-Standard first featured Footprint Recycling in March of 2005, the company was producing 2,500 gallons a month of the nontoxic, clean-burning fuel and selling every last drop. Cooper and his partners were becoming more successful with every passing day, but at the time were still experiencing difficulty convincing local restaurateurs to invest energy and trust in Footprint’s recycling services.
In the years since, the company has more than doubled its production, and Cooper anticipates the consumer-led interest in his fuel is only going to continue to grow.
“If all the cultivatable land in the country including things like shoulders on the roadsides were planted with oil seed crops, and all of the waste fry oil was used to make biodiesel, we wouldn’t even come close to taking over diesel production” Cooper said. “At best we could only make up to 30 percent of production needs”
However, he explained that such a scenario is the last thing a company like Footprint would ever endorse.
Footprint specializes in waste fry oil recycling, but growing crops to produce biodiesel flies in the face of producing sustainable, renewable resources. Cooper and his partners draw a line in the sand to separate the two practices, and are concerned about how fast big companies are jumping onto the biodiesel bandwagon.
“I’ve been reading a lot about some of the big problems being associated with this. Big industry is starting to move quickly and looking to Central (America) and South America to plant these crops, and it’s starting to be a cause of deforestation. The rainforest is being turned into an oilseed crop, and that’s not the right thing to do,” he said.
A more realistic view of biodiesel, he said, is to think of his product as a transitional stepping-stone to a new national solution to the fuel crisis. And for now, Cooper feels good about being in the right place at the right time to help out.
Footprint Recycling effectively diverts waste oil from heading out of the area to fuel economies elsewhere, and is able to create a value-added product where the resulting profits stay at home.
Many area restaurants previously had to pay to have their waste hauled off, so Cooper said he also gets satisfaction from helping his business clients save money. About 30 percent of Footprint Recycling’s business is helping to divert compost waste and meat scraps from landfills by picking up scraps that can be used by farms as feed and other various recyclers on its route to other communities.
There are currently 175 restaurants donating waste oil to Footprint, stretching from Humboldt County into the Rogue River Valley along the I-5 corridor in Oregon. In keeping with the sustainable practices the company’s moniker suggests, Footprint Recycling uses only its own biodiesel to fuel its traveling collection trucks.
The only thing holding Footprint back from producing beyond its current estimated production of 100,000 gallons a year is available grease. Cooper said his crew of five could feasibly make as much as 250,000 gallons of fuel in a year and still not sweat over the concern about whether or not they could sell the liquid gold they produce.
To put it into perspective, he gave a few numbers to illustrate his point. He said Humboldt County uses approximately 3 million gallons of diesel in a year, and a corner gas station on average sells as much in one week as Footprint produces in one year. Last summer Footprint employees frequently arrived at work to find early morning lines forming at their West End Road location for their fuel before the day’s supply was even made.
Continually finding ways to bump production weighs heavily on Cooper, who said he has a large number of people who are making big ticket buying decisions for vehicles based on the availability of his company’s product. There has even been a consideration lately to allow consumers to buy into the company somehow by pre-purchasing fuel to ensure their needed supply is available.
For now, Footprint Recycling is taking each day as it comes, and the employee-owned company hopes that the near future holds an opportunity to move to a larger facility to accommodate the community.
And every time a Footprint employee gets behind a truck that smells like a vat of hot, fresh French fries, they revel in a satisfaction that comes with their conscious effort to reduce their own footprint on the environment.
