Ecological Footprint

The worlds capacity to support human life is a limited resource that must be managed. While an individual may not have a large impact on this ecological footprint, the actions of combined individuals can influence a world of difference, and this global issue needs to be addressed with more pressing importance.

Iteration #1: My Ecological Footprint

In order to calculate my own ecological footprint, I completed an online study that asked a series of questions based on my everyday services, mobility, food, goods, and shelter. My results were:

 2.5 Earth’s would be required to provide resources if everybody lived as I do

 5.3 Global hectares of the Earth’s productive area would be required to support this lifestyle

Broken-down, my ecological footprint currently looks like this:

Ordered highest to lowest in terms of contribution to my footprint:

1) Food 4) Mobility

2) Services 5) Shelter

3) Goods

The challenge presented once an ecological footprint for an individual is calculated is—how can this be improved? How can my ecological footprint be reduced 25%? More? In order to reduce my footprint, I used the ecological footprint calculator, along with outside sources, to determine the factors that contribute most to my footprint and how I can reduce, or even completely eliminate these factors from my lifestyle. In the next section I outline 3 specific lifestyle changes I can make that can dramatically change my ecological footprint.

Lifestyle Changes to Improve my Ecological Footprint

In order to improve my ecological footprint, I made changes to my original answers to see what sort of realistic changes I could make to my everyday lifestyle. My goal: reduction of 25% (from Earth’s required of 2.5 to 1.8). The questions given to calculate my footprint were categorized, so the following are provisions of specific categories that will make my lifestyle more ecologically friendly on an everyday basis.

1) Goods

Question given: What is your average monthly expenditure on household consumer items?

Current answer: Between $100-$200

How can I improve this? By spending less than $50 monthly on household consumer items I can improve my Earth’s required by 0.4… This means that if everybody were to live the exact same lifestyle as I do the number of Earths needed to provide resources drops from 2.5 to 2.1. Another large impact that this change in my lifestyle would have would be the