My ecological footprint total was 7.9, when translated into hectares. 7.9 isn’t too bad, but some of my peers were far better than me with their footprint. For example, Justin and Kavyan both had a total of 7.45 hectares which is a number I would prefer to have. Ben and I had the same outcome of 7.9 which is still the upper half of the class. I have not talked to him much about it, but we probably have similar lifestyles. I thought I did a pretty good job with my outcome, but I was blown out of the water by Kira’s score of 5.96. I have no idea how she got it so low, but she did a good job.

Some actions that are currently increasing my footprint:

• I do not avoid disposables
• Owning two cars
• I normally shower for 15 – 20 minutes
• I normally only wear half the clothes I own
• I spend multiple hours on my computer everyday
• I make enough garbage to fill a box everyday
• I normally spend ½ to 1 hour in a car everyday
• My usual activities require a lot of equipment
• My house has two rooms per person
• I eat meat with every meal, and it is often non-organic

 

Out of these actions I will change how many disposables I use because single-use disposables have a big impact, they are so bad that by the end of 2021 Canada is planning to ban single use plastics, so by removing disposable products from my average day I am making a small change with a big impact. I will also be changing how long I spend showering because my average shower is about ten minutes which is 25 gallons (95 liters) of water, and some days I have two showers, so an average of 14 minutes showering a day. That is a lot of water I am wasting because I only spend about 3 minutes cleaning myself, the rest is just me relaxing in the warm water.

Another thing I will change is how much garbage I make in a day. I want to change it because I didn’t realize just how much garbage I make in a day. It is more than I would like so I will change it. Something else I will try to change is how long I spend in a car every day. I spend between 30 minutes and an hour in a car every day, but I realized I am only in a car when I am going somewhere for me, which should be an easy change and that is why I picked it. The last thing I will change is how many of my clothes I normally wear. I will normally only wear 50 to 75% of my clothes before I do my laundry. That is a lot of clothing I am not wearing, so by wearing more of my clothes I will be reducing how often I use the water for the laundry and at the same time wearing more of my clothing.

Some actions I will take to make these changes:

• I will wear cloth masks whenever I am required to wear a mask. By wearing cloth masks instead of disposable masks, I am using less disposables and making less garbage because I use 2 disposable masks most days.
• I will walk or ride my bike as much as I can instead of riding in a car to reduce how much time I spend in a car everyday
• I will keep track of how much garbage I make in a day by keeping it all and seeing how much I have at the end of each day
• I will spend only 6-8 minutes in the shower everyday by timing myself and showering only to clean myself not to relax or wake up in the morning
• Think about the potential garbage created before buying something at the store, and if it too much I will not buy it.
• I will wear all the clothes in my dresser
• If I must do my laundry, I will do it on cold instead of hot

 

Refection

Most of the changes I planned were simple, and that is what I was trying to teach myself. That a few small changes can make a big impact. The easiest change for me was wearing cloth masks every day. Before I preferred disposable mask because I found them more comfortable, but I found a few masks that fit my face and I now prefer cloth masks. All I had to do to make this change was carry around a cloth mask with me, instead of single-use ones.

Another change I said I would make is to make is spending only 6 – 8 minutes in the shower. This was one of the more difficult changes for me because I normally use my time in the shower to wake up in the morning and relax. By only using my time in the shower to shower it was making waking up in the morning more difficult and getting rid of time I give myself to relax. Most days I was able to spend only 5 – 6 minutes in the shower. Although other days I spent 10 – 12 minutes showering so an improvement, but in the future, I would still like to improve it further.

Spending less time in a car was a challenging change for me. It wasn’t because I am lazy and am unwilling to walk. It is because somedays I had to get a ride if I wanted to arrive on time. An example of this is right after I am done at school, I have sports and the place we meet is 10 kilometers away and I have only fifteen minutes to get there, so I had to get a ride. This example is one of the biggest obstacles I faced while doing this project. It was so difficult because even if I rode my bike, I wouldn’t be able to ride fast enough to do 10 kilometers in 15 minutes. When ever I could, I would walk or ride to where I was going but because of challenges like this I am not sure I can count this as a success. Another challenge I faced is my bikes flat tire, this was a tricky problem because I would mean I would either need to walk or get a ride in a car. To overcome this challenge, I learned how to fix a bike tire, so I could continue riding my bike.

I did very good job at keeping my garbage down during the testing period. Some days I had made no garbage by the end of the day. I did this by recycling everything I could and avoiding anything I couldn’t. For example, I normally will use plastic bags a lot for food or supplies, instead I got containers used them to carry my stuff. I was surprised with just how much you can recycle. I learned you can recycle glass jars. I didn’t know that before. Through learning more about recycling and being conscious about how much waste certain things would cause, I reduced how much garbage I make.

The last change I made was to wear all my clothing instead of just some of it. This also was not a very difficult change because all I had to do was wait a few more days to do my laundry. A lesson this change taught me is I don’t normally wear all my clothes because I will do my laundry and put the new clean clothes on top and just wear the same clothes again. Now that I know this, I will wear all my clothes by just going through my dresser in the morning instead of grabbing off the top.

Some obstacles during this project:

• Having only 15 minutes to go 10 kilometers right after school
• Not having cloth masks that fit my face well
• Products I use every day that create garbage
• Not having a water saving shower
• My bike’s flat tire

 

Somethings I would still like to improve is how long I spend in the shower I can get it down by only showering once a day or showering faster. I would also like to change from non-organic to organic food. To do this I can go to the store and add my opinion to what gets bought. One more thing I would like to change is how long I spend on the computer. By becoming a more efficient worker I can reduce the amount of time I spend on the computer. Overall, this was an eye-opening project and I look forward to trying to further improve my footprint in the future.