For this activity I took a quiz to find out what my ecological footprint is and how my lifestyle affects the earth. The quiz asked questions like how much I drive each week, how many people I live with, do I recycle, and how often I buy new products for my home, if I eat locally, etc.
The results in the end were surprising. I thought I conserved resources pretty well but according to my results it would take 3.9 earths to sustain me, kind of sad. My ecological footprint broke down as services being the biggest area of resources I use, followed by goods, food, shelter, and then mobility. To support my lifestyle, it takes 17.2 acres of land and 16.6 tons of carbon dioxide. Broken down into parts and what would be affected the most by my lifestyle would be energy land, followed by crop land, grazing land, forest land, built-up land, and fishing ground.
To reduce my part on the planet I want to start not using as much water by reducing time on dishes and taking shorter showers. I want to start recycling more and driving less, car pooling with others and walking more is something I want to do. Cutting back on electricity by turning off lights when I leave home and at night I'm going to do as well.
It is disturbing to think that my ecological footprint alone causes this much havoc to the earth. If everyone else causes this much damage to the earth I don't know how everything is going to keep as it is right now. People need to start taking bigger steps and precautions to helping the earth otherwise it won't be around much longer. Small steps everyday such as recycling, not using a lot of electricity and running water, eating locally, and walking instead of driving help. If everyone became dedicated to doing these steps it may actually work, but we need to work together.
Here is the link to the ecological footprint calculator:Ecological Footprint Calculator
These results were pretty upsetting and surprising to a lot of people in class. You think you pretty eco-friendly then you find out that you really aren't as much as you thought. But I think that if you are doing what you can then that is all that matters. As college students there are certain things we have no control over but we can always make small steps to better the planet.
ReplyDeleteI agree completely, I too was upset after finding out that my footprint was much larger than expected. The good news is that you are now aware of a change that could be made and that you do care about your impact on this earth.
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