My Ecological Footprint

Comparison of my footprint to those of others (hectares)

My footprint: 12.25

I noticed that my footprint is relatively high compared to others. This is probably because my family owns a vacation home. If it weren’t for this, my footprint would be 8.45 hectares, which is more reasonable.

Actions that currently increase my footprint

  1. I take 5-minute showers when I am capable of taking 2-minute showers.
  2. Many of my clothes were bought brand new for me.
  3. I do not typically re-use clothes.
  4. My family owns a vacation home that we do not own together with another family.
  5. I flush the toilet every time I use it.
  6. My family owns a huge car (SUV).
  7. I usually spend a lot of time on the computer every day.
  8. I eat non-organic beef a decent amount every week.
  9. I eat non-organic pork a decent amount every week.
  10. I do not grow much of my own food.
  11. I only wear about ½ of the clothes that I own.
  12. I do not really try to avoid using disposable items.
  13. I do not often repair things that might be thrown out.

Actions that I will try changing

  1. I take 5-minute showers when I am capable of taking 2-minute showers.

Changing this is a simple and easy way to greatly reduce my water usage with very little effort. Changing this will have a relatively large impact because showers use a lot of water. For every minute I spend in the shower, I use about 8 litres of water, so I will probably save more than 20 litres of water per day if I reduce my shower time.

  1. I do not typically reuse clothes.

This is also a simple task to change that will reduce my footprint by a little bit with very little effort. If I do this for a while, it will reduce the amount of clothes that I need to buy. Each cotton t-shirt that I buy likely requires more than 2500 litres of water, which means that even buying one less shirt will indirectly have a significant impact on my water usage. Changing this will also reduce how frequently I must wash my clothes. Each time the washing machine runs, it likely uses more than 60 litres of water, so reusing clothes will have a decent impact on my water usage as well.

  1. I do not often repair things that might be thrown out.

Changing this task may be a bit harder than the other tasks because there aren’t many things that can be repaired, but I know that I can do it. This will reduce the amount of garbage that I produce by a small amount (indirectly reducing my effect on the environment).

  1. I only wear about ½ of the clothes that I own.

Changing this probably won’t be very hard to do, and it will reduce my footprint by a decent amount. If I do this for a while, it will reduce the amount of clothes that I need to buy (as mentioned above in #2, this could indirectly significantly reduce my water usage), and it will reduce how frequently I have to wash my clothes (reducing my water usage).

  1. I don’t really try to avoid using disposable items.

This won’t be very hard to do, and it will reduce my footprint by a decent amount. This will reduce the amount of garbage that I produce (indirectly reducing my effect on the environment).

How I will change these actions to work to reduce my footprint

  1. I will limit myself to 2 minutes whenever I take a shower, instead of taking a 5-minute shower. This will reduce my footprint by 0.2 hectares.
  2. Every other evening when I go to bed, I will save the clothes that I wore that day, so I can wear them the day after. This will reduce my footprint by 0.05 hectares.
  3. Every time I am about to throw away something, I will try to think if it can be repaired or reused in any way. This will reduce my footprint by 0.05 hectares.
  4. I will try to wear at least ¾ of the clothes that I own before I wash all the dirty clothes, and I will wash my clothes less frequently. This will reduce my footprint by 0.3 hectares.
  5. Every time I use a disposable item, I will try to think if it is really necessary to use it, and if there are any better alternatives. This will reduce my footprint by 0.25 hectares.

Some of the changes that were easy for me to make

  1. Limiting myself to a 2-minute shower instead of a 5-minute shower was not extremely hard for me to do. Once I started being more wary of how much unnecessary time I am spending in the shower, it was easy for me to cut down on that unnecessary time, which put me under the 2-minute mark.
  2. Re-using clothes was even easier than I thought it would be when I made the plan. Every other day in the evening, I would fold my clothes from that day and put them on a shelf in my room. The next day, I would wear those clothes. Simple as that. The hardest part was remembering to save my clothes.
  3. It was quite easy to avoid using unnecessary disposable items. I got into the habit of always thinking before I used anything, and then deciding if it was possible to avoid using the item if it was disposable. It was very easy once I got into the habit.

Some of the changes that were difficult for me to make

  1. I found it quite difficult to repair things that might have been thrown out. This is because most of things that I see thrown out aren’t repairable in any way. Often when I am throwing out something, that thing can’t be repaired in a way that it can be reused. Such items include paper towels, tissues, plastic cups, and broken pencils.
  2. I also found it difficult to wear ¾ of the clothes that I own. A lot of the clothes that I don’t often wear are very uncomfortable or too small, and I wasn’t dedicated enough to wear a lot of these clothes. I believe that if I were more dedicated, this task could have been done easily.

Some obstacles that I encountered

  • Motivation to change my habits. I wasn’t dedicated very much to this project, and many times I found it hard to push myself to develop new habits. This project would have gone much smoother if I gave myself some sort of an incentive to give me more motivation.
  • My own memory. A lot of the time I forgot about improving my footprint, and sometimes I forgot about the changes that I intended to make. It would have made everything a lot easier if I set up more reminders for things like the shower time.

I think that if I had more preparation, this project would have been a lot easier and simpler for me to do.

Steps for the future

I am planning on slowly reducing my screen time in the future, although I think it will be extremely hard to do. This will require a lot of dedication to change because right now I am almost at the point where the only thing I’m doing all day long is staring at my screen. For now, I don’t think this will change for a while.

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