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| How big is your ecological footprint? Picture found at http://graciousinlove.files.wordpress.com/ |
Today, I visited footprintnetwork.org/calculator to calculate my ecological footprint. An ecological footprint tells you how
many planet Earths it would take to provide everyone on the planet with the
lifestyle you live. The average
human lifestyle takes anywhere from 3-5 Earths. If everyone on the planet lived like me, it would take 4.5
Earths.
The calculations begin with your food consumption. I eat pork once every few weeks, about
twice a month. I eat beef once a
week and fish once a month.
Poultry is something I eat almost everyday, upwards of four to five
times a week. Eggs, milk, and
dairy products are consumed nearly every meal. About half of my diet is based of fresh, unpackaged foods,
however very little of the food I eat is locally grown. My father has a vegetable garden, but
that only accounts for about 10% of our food. We have three avocado trees, various other fruit trees, three tomato plants, and a few other producers thus far.
The second part of the calculations involve clothes,
furniture, and things for your home.
I don’t buy any news clothes on monthly. I use old clothes until they wear out and just wash them
frequently. So, my shirts, pants,
shoes, etc last years. Most of our
furniture is secondhand, made by my dad, or was bought before we moved into
this house. We keep furniture
until we absolutely need to replace them.
The same goes for electronic appliances. When something breaks, we try to fix it or make due the best
we can. We only replace them when
they can no longer be repaired. My
current bed is my grandmother’s old one, and the couch in our living room was
given to us by a neighbor.
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| Recycling is good for the earth. Photograph found at prlog.org |
Also, we rarely buy new electronic products, maybe once a
year at Christmas time. The
television we got recently was a hand me down from my mother’s work place. In my family, cell phones are used
until broken and irreparable.
Occasionally, we buy new books and magazines for the house. We have a monthly magazine
subscription. We get three
magazines and a newspaper secondhand from my grandpa. Lately, the only books I buy are school textbooks. For everything else, I go to the local
library.
The next part of the calculations involved recycling. In my house, we recycle all our paper
waste but rarely buy recycled paper products. Although, a few of my school notebook are made of recycled
paper. We also recycle 90% of our
plastic waste but don’t specifically buy PCR recycled products. Anytime we purchase those are purely
coincidence.
The next part of the calculations involve the house
itself. I live in a free-standing
house with two other people, and the main materials the house is made from are
wood, brick, and stucco. The walls
and roof are wood. We have two
brick columns in front of the house, and the ceiling and outside walls are made
of stucco. My house has running
water and working electricity.
None of our electricity is from a renewable power source; it all comes
from the electric company Southern California Edison. We spend $75 on electricity and $25 on gas per month.
The last part of the calculations had to do with
traveling. I travel approximately
70 miles per week in my car, and I almost never drive with others. Most of my traveling is to go to and
from school, and I do that on my own.
My car is a 2006 Toyota Sienna, and it gets 17 miles to the gallon in
the city and 24 miles to the gallon highway. Combined, it has a 19 MPG rating. As for other modes of transportation, I never ride on
motorcycles of any kind, I almost never use public transportation like a bus or
train, and I haven’t flown anywhere in years.
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| The breakdown of my ecological footprint. Screencap taken from footprintnetwork.org/calculator |
At the end of all these calculations, we would need 4.5
planet Earths if every one of the seven billion people on the planet lived like
me. The largest area of my
ecological footprint, at 44%, is of services. 21% goes to Food, 15% is Goods, 12% is shelter, and 8% is
Mobility. To support my lifestyle,
it takes 20.1 global acres and 19.8 tons of carbon dioxide.
If I reduced the amount of animal products I eat by half,
purchased products that used less packaging or were made from recycled consumer
products, installed solar panels in my home, used more energy-efficient
appliances, and used public transportation one day a week instead of driving my
car, it would reduce my ecological footprint by an entire earth. If every American did this, we would use
almost 2 billion less global acres to sustain our lifestyles. That area would be equivalent to
approximately 1.5 billion footall fields.
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| The newest square-foot gardening plots in my dad's garden. Photo taken by me |
As much as I would love to be able to reduce my ecological
footprint in such a way, it’s not entirely doable. My family doesn’t have the money to buy brand new
energy-efficient appliances or install solar panels on our roof. And I highly doubt I’ll be eating half
the amount of animal products I do now.
I like meat and milk way too much, and like everyone else, I can be a
selfish person. However once I
transfer to Cal State Fullerton, I’ll be taking the train to school rather than
driving, and I can start car-pooling more often. I can also pay more attention to buying recycled consumer
product. Also, my dad hopes soon
that his garden will be providing at least one quarter of our food.
