Eco footprint
Planet Green
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A 4.5 might seem like a tiny shoe size, but it's actually the perfect size in acres for your Ecological Footprint. What's an Ecological Footprint? It's a branded term like Kleenex or Xerox, and the number represents a measure of the natural resources we consume compared to the Earth's capacity to regenerate those resources. As the families in Wa$ted! learn, each of us has an eco-footprint determined by how sustainable our lives are. The number of miles we drive, the size of our home, the amount of trash we create, and even the time we spend watching television expands our eco-footprint and increases the amount of irreversible damage done to the planet.
Most of our eco-footprints are much larger than the ideal of 4.5 acres. The average footprint in the U.S. is a whopping 24 acres, with many individuals taking up even more space. For example: an occasional meat eater who lives in a 1,200 square foot condo, drives a car 100 miles a week, and flies over 10 hours a year has an Ecological Footprint of about 29. More meat, house, and mileage make eco-footprints even larger. According to the Earth Day Network calculator, if everyone in the world lived like the average U.S. citizen -- with similar eating, transportation, living, and consumption habits -- we'd need five more planets just to support ourselves.
Clearly, we're using up more than America's fair share of natural resources, and Earth is paying the price with global warming, an increasingly scarce supply of drinkable water, and other troubling symptoms of being overburdened. For a global perspective on what it means to measure human impact on the planet, check out this radio piece from the fellow that first coined the term "Ecological Footprint."
Where does your footprint fall on the sustainability scale? Are you better or worse than the households featured on Wa$ted? Are you recycling as much as you could? Do you use phosphate-free soap and detergent? When you shop, do you forgo paper or plastic in favor of your own recycled cotton tote? Your answers to these questions and others in this interactive quiz will help you find out the size of your eco-footprint. Chances are, it's larger than it should be, but don't fret -- something as simple as cutting back on how much meat you eat can have a dramatic impact on your sustainability. One Cornell University study found that an average quarter pounder siphons 600 gallons of water, 1.2 pounds of feed grain, and 6 square feet of former prairie land - plus the loss of five times the patty's weight in topsoil. Talk about an aftertaste!
Other ways you can reduce your eco footprint include walking instead of driving, recycling as much as possible, and buying a green home, and greenovating your current home.
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