This week I want to talk about our personal ecological footprints we have on the planet.
As one person you may not think you have that big of an impact, but we as americans have huge individual footprints, ecological and carbon.
Just think about How much land you personally take up to sustain your lifestyle. Not only the land you live on but all the land it takes to create all the inputs in your life as well as the outputs.
Our ecological footprint is our overall impact we have on the environment. We have to determine weather or not it is sustainable ( ours as americans is not!). To do so we need to calculate the amount land required to provide all food, water, energy, and all other materials we consume and absorb.
To do this you first need to know about productive land. Biocapacity is the amount of land that can support human life. It consists of things like our oceans, forests, and croplands. On a global scale we as individuals need 15.7 Hectares per person. One Hectare is equal to 2.5 acres.
To determine your own ecological footprint you can take a quiz online. We did this in my ESA 200 class and the results were very surprising. Our class results said that if everyone lived like we did we would generally need around 5 more earths to support our way of living! That is way to much if you ask me, I think everyone needs to work on reducing our footprints. We can't be using up all of the earths recources and just getting off scotch free.
You can take the quiz yourself by clicking on the link below. Some categories are hard to know the correct answer so just estimate and do the best you can. Also for the most accurate results use your home as a reference not your dorm room.
http://myfootprint.org/en/visitor_information/
Whats your footprint?
Sources:
"Ecological Footprint." First, We Need a Little Information from You.: Quiz by Center for Sustainable Economy. CSE, 5 Oct. 2012. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.
Wow. I just took this quiz and it says if everyone lived like me we would need 4 Earths! That is so crazy, I thought I was doing a relative good job at recycling and trying to reduce my footprint. I guess not! Some tips I got to reduce my foot print was to not drive as much, and try to take public transportation more often. Also to try to buy more organic foods, and add more energy saving features to my home. Thank you for showing me this quiz it really changes look on how I was living and teaches me how to reduce my footprint.
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