October 14, 2020
The Plan:
Calculation of your footprint:
My ecological footprint is 15.2 hectares.
Comparison of my peers’ footprints:
Draedon’s ecological footprint is 6.8 hectares
Ronan’s ecological footprint is 8.65 hectares
Lucas’ ecological footprint 7.9 hectares
Natalie’s ecological footprint is 12.16 hectares
Sinu’s ecological footprint is 8.35 hectares
Justin’s ecological footprint is 7.45 hectares
Actions that currently increase the size of my footprint:
– I usually shower more than 10 minutes
– Most of my clothes were bought brand new
– I hardly wear about three fourths of the clothes I own
– I use non-environmentally friendly pesticides
– I usually spend some time traveling just with my family in my car
– I usually spend half an hour to an hour per day in a vehicle
– My family uses more than two vehicles
– The car I use most often is a huge car
– Between one to two hectares of land has been changed to do my activities
– I usually spend more than an hour on the computer and/or watching TV per day
– I need a lot of equipment for my average day’s activities
Five actions that I will try changing to reduce the size of my footprint:
– I will take shorter showers by reducing them to around one to two minutes because right now I take upwards of 10-minute showers which is way longer than I truly need to efficiently clean my body.
– I will buy my new clothing from a thrift store because whenever I currently buy new clothes, I buy them brand new which only encourages factory pollutants and it would be better to reuse clothes than to just send them into a landfill.
– I will stop using non-environmentally friendly pesticides because there is not really any necessity for them right now so changing to environmentally friendly pesticides or ever changing to not using any pesticides at all will be a very easy way to help reduce a substantial chunk of my ecological footprint.
– I will spend less time traveling with just my family in the car because it can not only help the reduction of my ecological footprint, it can also help reduce someone else’s as well so there is less pollution being produced.
– I will spend less than an hour on my computer and/ or watching TV per day because it already is not good for my eyes so reducing my screen time would be extremely helpful.
How will you change these five actions to reduce your footprint?
– I can take shorter showers by not getting distracted and singing along with the songs I play; I could even stop playing music all together because that seems to be a big timewaster while in the shower. I could also try to speed myself up because prior to this assignment, I have never really had a second thought about how much time I have spent in the shower so I believe that if I make an effort, it should come easily.
– I can buy my new clothes from thrift stores by shopping there whenever I do need new clothing. It is just as simple as driving, or biking, to the thrift store instead of driving to another store in order to reuse someone else’s clothing. I don’t buy clothes to often so over these two weeks if I do need any clothing, I will go to a thrift store.
– I can stop using non-environmentally friendly pesticides by using them up until they are out and then going to the store and buy new pesticides that are environmentally friendly. Using environmentally friendly pesticides can help by not damaging plants and potentially food, so it is a good idea to be inclined to buy them in the future.
– I can spend less time travelling with just my family in my car by inviting my neighbours or friends to join us in our car ride. They of course would have to be within my bubble, but not only would it reduce my ecological footprint, it could really help someone else’s as well. Carpooling is important because the less cars that we have on the road, the less pollution gets emitted into the atmosphere.
– I can spend less than an hour on my computer and/or watching TV per day by setting timers on each of my applications to restrict the possibility of overusing it. I am able to set these timers because they are a helpful feature within an iPhone’s iOS as well as a Mac’s MacOS, I am not sure about android or google smartphones. Although it will be much more challenging to complete my homework on my computer in under an hour, it would be a good challenge to try.
The Reflection:
Describe some of the changes that were easy for you to make and why.
Some changes that were especially easy for me to make were changing to environmentally friendly pesticides, shortening the length of my showers to 1 – 2 minutes, and shopping for my new clothing from a thrift store. I found that switching to environmentally pesticides was easy for me because of how little effort was needed to create an impact on my footprint. Shortening the length of my showers to 1 – 2 minutes was simple for me because I had so many factors that greatly added to my time wasting in the shower so when I removed them from my routine, my showers reduced up to 9 minutes some days. Shopping for new clothing from a thrift store was easy for me I found that my sisters enjoyed thrift shopping so whenever they went to the thrift store to buy something, I would wither donate my clothes or buy some new clothes. I found these to be especially simple because prior to this assignment they were not something that I used to think of doing but now they are just coming naturally to me.
Describe some of the changes that were difficult for me to make and why.
Some changes that were difficult for me were spending less time travelling with just my family in my car, spending less than an hour on my computer and/or watching TV per day, and parts of taking shorter showers. At first, not travelling with just my family in my car was difficult to accomplish because I could not find many people who would want to carpool with us so I to really work hard for that action to reduce my footprint. I found that spending less than an hour on my computer and/or watching TV per day was way more difficult than I thought. I always have not really cared how long I would spend on my phone or on my computer but once I started keeping track of it, it became super hard. Although taking a shower in 1 – 2 minutes is in the easy list, there were also many challenges involved that made it much harder. For example, I almost always have listened to music while in the shower, but when I cut it out, not only did my showers go faster, but it also made showering very silent as if it was missing something.
Describe some of the obstacles you encountered.
An obstacle that I encountered while trying to spend less than an hour on my computer and/or watching TV per day was trying to complete all of my school work in under an hour so that I can have enough free time to enjoy a show or something else along those lines. In order to spend reduce my showers to 1 – 2 minutes, I faced the hard challenge of speeding up my routine of going through all my tasks in the shower such as shampoo, conditioner, and body wash which was originally hard to adapt to. A challenged I faced while stopping to use environmentally friendly pesticides was waiting for the original bottles to run because I didn’t want to waste anything. Also, I faced the challenge of encouraging my parents to go to the market to buy some environmentally pesticides. An obstacle I encountered while shopping at a thrift store was finding shirts and/or pants that fit well and had a design that was nice enough for my taste. If I ever didn’t find anything of interest at the thrift store, then I would just not by anything at all. In order to spend less time travelling with just my family in the car, I decided to invite a few people to carpool with us, but after we had received several declines from people within our bubble, I decided to just get my family to ride in the same car each morning therefore reducing the emissions from two other vehicles.
Describe the steps you plan to take in the future.
The steps I plan to take in the future are mostly ones that I have already taken, such as sticking to most of these actions as well as trying to bike to school every morning therefore I can get to my school without leaving behind any carbon dioxide. It would also be nice to expand on my effort to reduce my ecological footprint because there is not really any harm, it can only help out the only planet than we’ve got.