My Ecological Footprint

My Ecological Footprint: 7.9 Hectares

Total Points: 790

Comparing My Footprint to Others

Mine: 7.9

Others: 8.7, 8.65, 12.16, 7.45, 7.45, 6.8

 

Ten things that increase footprint

  1. My showers are typically pretty long, over 3-6 minutes
  2. Though I don’t have too much garbage, it is still more than ideal.
  3. I always flush the toilet thoroughly, sometimes even twice to make sure it is clean.
  4. I am very bad at turning lights off when I leave a room.
  5. I used to use lots of hand-me-downs, but I don’t anymore.
  6. Also, the number of rooms we have in our house add up to a lot
  7. I drive to school every day instead of transit or biking, though I also carpool
  8. Instead of a regular sized car, I have an SUV
  9. None of my food is organic
  10. My habits of eating fish increase my footprint a bit too

Five of the ten things that can be changed for 2 weeks

  1. Reduce shower to 3-6 minutes instead of 10+
  2. Reduce Garbage output from shoebox to cup, or to no garbage
  3. Flush toilet less
  4. Turn off lights when I leave a room
  5. Repair stuff instead of throwing out

Exactly how I’ll change these and why I chose them

Most of these are relatively straight forward in how they can be changed. I will be more efficient when taking my showers. I’ll flush the toilet only for #2 instead of always. I’ll remember to turn off the lights when I leave the room. Also, I’ll keep an eye out when throwing out garbage for stuff I could fix and still use, or stuff that doesn’t have to be garbage.

Basically, the reason I chose each of these is because they were things for me to change about my lifestyle that were achievable and reasonable. Because it would cost too much and would be too disrupting to just out of the blue change what car our family uses or renovate our house to have less rooms.

Reflection

Changes that are Easy

I found that reducing my garbage was the easiest, I think because I could just put my mind to it and avoid using things that produce waste. It was also pretty easy to turn off the lights when I leave the room, again, I just had to put my mind to it and keep it in the front of my mind.

Changes that were difficult

It was harder to flush the toilet less, as there was such an instinctual habit to flush it after I use it. It was also very hard to reduce my shower time, as I really like a nice long warm shower and usually stay in for longer than I need to. Finally, it was hard to find things that I could fix instead of throwing away, but I did do it at least once

Obstacles Endured

An obstacle I endured was that there weren’t many things for me to fix instead of throwing away. Another obstacle I endured was my habits, as I often did things the way I always do, so I had to put in effort to break those habits.

Steps planned to take in the Future

In the future, I plan to keep reducing and doing these things I can to make my carbon footprint smaller. Maybe, I’ll even add some more things to focus on like riding my bike to school instead of being driven. In the long, long term, I’ll try and keep it in the forefront of my parents’ minds when they make decisions that might affect our family’s carbon footprint.

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