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I like to think I live a pretty green lifestyle. I recycle my plastic and paper, try not to drive somewhere I could walk, turn the lights off when I leave the house. So now that TreeHugger.com and PlanetGreen.com editor Meaghan O'Neill has asked me to spend eight weeks following the steps in her and Graham Hill's new book, Ready, Set, Green: Eight Weeks to Modern Eco-Living, I can't imagine it will be that difficult.
The first thing that catches my eye is a link on page nine: "To calculate your Ecological Footprint, go to www.ecofoot.org." Easy enough. An ecological footprint is, to put it simply, how much of the Earth's space a life takes up. How many acres of natural resources does it take for me to eat three meals a day, drive my car, support my new-book habit, play the Nintendo Wii, use my computer, travel to see my parents on the weekends?
I'm just one person—so I think I can't be making that much of an impact. I answer a series of questions about how often I eat beef (rarely), chicken (often), dairy (daily), and how much of my food is locally grown. (Embarrassingly, my estimate is qualified as "I sometimes have a salad with my canned ravioli," and the icon of a dessert gets three times bigger than the picture of broccoli.) It takes a lot of energy and fuel to get all this food from the farms where its raised to my local supermarket—even more in the winter, because here in New York, we sure aren't growing oranges in January. So I lose points for that, but I gain some back by living in an apartment building, rarely buying new furniture, and working from home (which means I hardly ever use my car).
All this puts me in a little below normal. If everyone lived like me, we'd need 4.5 Earths to fulfill our needs; the average is 5 1/3.
So I feel sort of good about that, but come on: four Earths? I'm terrible at math but that clearly does not add up. Looks like there's more room for improvement than I thought, but I'm up for the challenge—even if it means cutting back on my Wii time.
More about starting to go green
Five Simple Steps that Make a Big Difference
More about measuring your ecological footprint
What Is an Eco Footprint?
Meet the Bookkeeper: An Interview With Mathis Wackernagel of Global Footprint Network
More about eating locally grown food
Eat Locally and Ease Climate Change
Think About What You Eat, Not Just Where it Comes From
Get the book
Ready, Set, Green: Eight Weeks to Modern Eco-living
Blythe Copeland is a freelancer writer living on Long Island. Read more about her foray into the green life in her previous columns as she follows the plan set out in the book Ready, Set, Green: Eight Weeks to Modern Eco-Living.
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