My
Ecological Footprint
I went to www.footprintnetwork.org/calculator and
answered numerous questions regarding my eating habits and energy uses and
other questions regarding what I do with certain resources. Answering these
questions will give me an idea my effect ecologically on the planet. Before
taking the test I was almost confident I didn't use too many
resources. But that might be compared to the average person in the United
States.
I was rather surprised when my ecological footprint showed that if everyone were like me then we would need 3.5 Planet Earths to provide enough resources. In the footprint breakdown my services use was a little more than half of it all and the next ended up being food. To support my lifestyle it would take 15.7 global acres of the Earth’s productive area. The most in this category by far was energy land. Crop Land and Forest Land were about a third of the energy land used but still a decent chunk used. The rest of the land use was very small.
I was rather surprised when my ecological footprint showed that if everyone were like me then we would need 3.5 Planet Earths to provide enough resources. In the footprint breakdown my services use was a little more than half of it all and the next ended up being food. To support my lifestyle it would take 15.7 global acres of the Earth’s productive area. The most in this category by far was energy land. Crop Land and Forest Land were about a third of the energy land used but still a decent chunk used. The rest of the land use was very small.
I clicked on “explore scenarios” to check how I can reduce my footprint. If I
pledged to reduce the amount of animal products I currently eat by half my
footprint goes down by .1. If I pledged to purchase products that used less
packaging or were made out of 100% post-consumer recycled content material my
footprint goes down by .2. If I pledged to use public transportation one
day more each week instead of driving my car it goes down a little less than .1
in overall reduction to my footprint. All together it comes out to about .4
reduction to my ecological footprint if I were to make these changes.
I can honestly say I am surprised and at the same time not surprised. As an
American I use much more than I probably could ever need. Kind of an eye opener
overall. I should probably take steps little by little to make my ecological
footprint a little smaller, which the scenarios did give me some ideas. This was a rather interesting bit of information.
It's crazy to me that doing things like switching to 100% post-consumer recycled content would only lower your score by .2. It would be a huge lifestyle change for one to remove half of their animal intake, switch to public transportation another day in the week AND switch all your pre-packaged products to 100% recycled for ONLY .4 of your eco score!
ReplyDeleteI guess we really are using that much of the Earth!
Yeah, I don't know if I will be making any sudden changes. But I figure after I educate myself a bit more on this stuff. Perhaps...just perhaps I will stop buying certain products and start using more environmental friendly products. And based on that assignment we just did, maybe learn to make a couple things on my own instead of buying a name brand. It really is scary thinking about how much of the Earth a typical American uses hah.
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