Monday, October 4, 2010

Eye Opener: Ecological Footprint

After taking a quiz to calculate my Ecological footprint I feel inspired to make changes in the way I live on a daily basis. According to this quiz, it would take approximately 4.1 earths to support humanity if everyone lived the same lifestyle I do. This quiz broke it down into a pie chart to describe the areas in which I leave the biggest footprint. According to the pie chart, 49% of my footprint goes towards energy, 15% goes towards food, 16% goes to shelter, 16% goes to goods and 5% goes to mobility.

This ecological footprint quiz was quite a reality check, and I think it has made me more mindful of the impact of many of my consumer habits. These habits, which include the food I tend to eat, my method of transportation, how and when I choose to recycle, and even the clothes I buy all have an impact on my ecological footprint and I plan on attempting to minimize my footprint starting now, after this eye-opening activity.

To take the quiz yourself just visit this link: Ecological Footprint Calculator

5 comments:

  1. It's amazing how many little things can help reduce your ecological footprint.

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  2. I was about the same as you with needing 4.2 earths. It was really quite shocking, wasn't it? It's amazing to see all of the things add up that you wouldn't typically think of.

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  3. These truely are a reality check for everyone, I think they impact the way alot of us go about our day-to-day lives.

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  4. I also think this was a reality check to be more conscious of our everyday habits. I am glad that this test inspired you to make changes to better our environment!

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  5. I agree with you in Katie in that this was a reality check. The "star wars" activity we did in class today really hit this message home for me. I am very much a kinesthetic learner and this showed just what the quiz was telling me. I am glad that we all saw that by working together and thinking outside of the box we can reduce our footprint.

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