The Footprint Blog

Fascinating reading

As a San Francisco-based company, the TerraPass team has more than the usual variety of ties to Stanford University. Through one such connection, we were made aware of an interesting project and resource, cleverly entitled Sound Advice for a Green Earth, or SAGE. For this project, Stanford students taking the upper division/graduate course “Sustaining Action: Research, Analysis and Writing for… read more →

When gas wins over electric

Last weekend, I bought a new dryer. The old one was kaput, and though I wish it were otherwise, a clothesline doesn’t suffice for my family’s lifestyle. I started my quest with some virtual shopping. First dilemma: electric or gas? Over the years I’ve always assumed “gas” because generating electricity by burning fuel and then making heat with the electricity… read more →

Lights. iPhone. Action!

For those of you who have been dying to see our landfills in action (haven’t you always wanted to see a gas flow meter up close -- I mean, like really close?), here’s your chance! Last week, Erin (our CEO) visited the Flathead County landfill gas-to-energy project in Kalispell, MT for our annual verification site visit. Erin took some great… read more →

TerraPass Answers!

Hey Footprint readers, We’re bringing back our “TerraPass Answers.” It’s quite simple -- if you have a question plaguing you about your latest decision to purchase a new car or to install flooring, our readers may be able to contribute more knowledge and expertise. Please send your questions to info@terrapass.com. We’ll only publicize information that you want us to. To… read more →

Why we love trees

The first Arbor Day, the tree planters' holiday, was held in Nebraska in 1872, where a member of the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture proposed that a day be set aside annually for tree planting. It was a huge success -- over one million trees were planted in a single day. Shortly after this first observance, other states passed legislation… read more →

Whoa mama!

This Mother’s Day, I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon of eco-friendly products. By all means, please (as always) consider the environmental impact of your gifts or check out these great gift ideas from Huffington Post, Treehugger, and Grist. But if I have to read another blog post about how flowers are destroying the planet, I’ll just get depressed.… read more →

Farm of the future

The Native American tribes that hunted the plains between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains for most of the last millennium are often held up as models of wastelessness (a word I just invented) for, among other things, their innovation in using virtually every part of the animal. Those of us who saw Dances with Wolves will recall how… read more →

The guilty pleasure of reading

When I was a little girl, I read a stack of Berenstein Bears books every morning before I would do anything else -- and this was before I could officially “read.” This love of reading has persisted throughout my life. I almost always have a book with me nowadays, as my TerraPass colleagues can attest. Unfortunately, the business of publishing… read more →

Eco-friendly house-in-a-box

I guess good things don’t always come in small packages. It’s all the rage these days and it comes in - and out - of a box, delivered neatly to your doorstep. Well, technically, it gets delivered to your plot of land since you wouldn’t have a door yet. I’m talking about prefabricated houses, specifically the subspecies designed to use… read more →

No, we can’t predict the weather

One of my favorite global warming denier talking points is that “you can’t predict the weather!” OK, yes, it’s true: long-term weather forecasting is basically impossible because of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, aka the Butterfly Effect. To summarize the problem, (though you should really read James Gleick’s 1988 masterpiece Chaos: Making a New Science) in the 1950’s, a former… read more →
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