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Ecological Footprint Assignment

Ecological Footprint Reduction Plan

My Ecological Footprint score: 8.7

Ten Actions That Increase The Size Of My Footprint
  1. I take really, really long showers
  2. I don’t really compost
  3. My family uses cars really often
  4. My family uses lots of heating in the winter
  5. My diet consists of a lot of meat and some processed food, plus most of it isn’t organic
  6. Most of my clothes are brand new (although I usually keep my clothes for a long time and buy from ethical/sustainable clothing shops nowadays so I’m not as worried about this as I used to be)
  7. My family isn’t mindful about waste and our garbage can may fill up quickly
  8. I spend a lot of time using electronic devices
  9. I use beauty products in single-use plastic containers (shampoo, lotion etc)
  10. I drive long distances to go out with my friends
Five Actions I’ll Take To Reduce The Size Of My Footprint (+Plans)
  1. Take shorter showers – I will do this by timing my showers, making sure I don’t zone out, cutting my “singing in the shower” habit, and just speeding up to avoid using a lot of water. I will record this in the table below. I want to have showers in the singular digits consistently by the end of the 2 weeks, but preferably in the lowest category of the calculator’s shower time list. I want to do this because I’ve always wanted to reduce my water waste from showering.


Table – Please take this with a grain of salt, I’m mostly approximating and sometimes I forgot to record times 

114 mins
25
39.5
47
54
67.5
73
85
  1. Reduce screen time – It’s slightly difficult to reduce screen time when lots of my schoolwork is done on my computer, but I’ll try my best to reduce distractions and go on social media less. I don’t watch much TV, but when I do, I’ll try to watch whatever the rest of my family is watching with them. I will be specific about this by deleting certain social media apps like Instagram (which I kind of got rid of already for my mental health) and only occasionally using my phone. I want to do this because I know this is how I spend most of the electricity I don’t need to be spending!
  1. I’ll make more eco-friendly plans with my friends – I’ll try to go places closer to my house or visit stores less often. My friends and I usually go biking near Coquitlam Centre and buy snacks, but I’ll start bringing my own snacks and, when the Coronavirus situation improves, take public transit instead of driving there and just walk instead of ride my bike. In the meantime, I’ll try to plan outings after school (when I’ll be in the area) or just avoid gatherings at all (I don’t think I’ll be going out anytime soon if the cases stay this high). I want to do this because it increases my use of cars (which is already a lot) by quite a bit!
  1. I’ll dress warmly and avoid heating – I don’t get cold very easily, but I use the heating system in my house out of habit and usually don’t dress warmly inside my house. I want to make sure I don’t turn the heater on in my room at all, since it’s barely fall yet! I want to do this because it’s another obvious waste of electricity.
  1. I’ll eat less processed food – Processed desserts and the like are really bad for the environment because they cause a lot of waste, need to be transported over long distances, use terribly unhealthy/unsustainable ingredients and the like. This summer I’ve learned to bake, and I’ve decided that unless I buy local or bake myself, I won’t be eating cakes and cookies and whatnot from the grocery store. I’ll reduce the amount of sugar I eat that way as well! A win-win.
Footprint Comparison
A list of footprints that I collected from my classmates in our Discord server.
A list of footprints that I collected from my classmates in our Discord server.

My footprint seems to be right in the middle on this list. The average (mean) of this data is actually 8.744, which is mindblowing. I recalculated to incorporate some score changes and was pleasantly surprised. While being in the middle is pretty cool, I’d love to reduce my footprint and I hope my classmates have luck with reducing theirs as well!

Ecological Footprint Reflection

After 14 days of subtly adjusting my habits, I’ve returned to report on my progress! First, I’m going to talk briefly about each goal, and then I’ll respond to some of the questions from the rubric. Some of these habits were hard to adjust because they took place over a longer period of time, but I tried to choose things that were changeable within a short period of time and easy to be consistent with. Here goes!

First, I want to report on progress. I’m going to go through each goal and just explain what happened; I’ll start with the showering/water use one. I definitely didn’t reduce my consumption by too much or hit my target perfectly, but I definitely got my minutes out of the double digits and into respectable bounds. I also identified some strategies I could use to shorten my insanely long (usually 20+ minutes or more) showers to manageable numbers. I didn’t really succeed in reducing my screen time for a number of reasons, so that’s a goal i’m going to have to further work on in the future. I usually watch YouTube videos in the background while working on things and spend a lot of time texting my friends, but I think the amount of homework I’ve been doing coupled with the fact that I’ve been getting into gaming lately has made this goal more difficult. I also regret making this goal so unclear; it’s in no way a SMART goal. Now, onto the third goal! I haven’t really gotten a chance to go out with my friends at all in the last little while, but I moved some of my plans this week (which were cancelled because of the rain) to the week where we’ll all be at school at the same time for Science, so that definitely reduces my transportation impact! The heater hasn’t come on once in my house in the last two weeks, which is wonderful. At the time of writing this, the weather has suddenly gotten a lot colder in the span of a few days, and I’m definitely pulling out my fluffy socks and slippers. I haven’t been buying a lot of processed foods and desserts and I’ve done a bit of baking here and there. My family friends had a birthday in their family and making homemade cupcakes was not only rewarding, but I encouraged them to start baking at home, which made me feel like I made a difference. They’re all small changes, and I made small progress, but I’m proud!

Describe the changes that were easy for you to make and why.

It was pretty easy for me to make certain changes because I didn’t quite get the time to test them over and over or I was already trying to do those things. I didn’t get to go out much with my friends, but when I did, the timing was getting more and more convenient. I can’t wait till we switch over to doing Science as a class so we can hang out after school. I wanted to limit my consumption of processed baked goods anyway, and I succeeded. I didn’t limit my processed frozen food consumption, because my mom just bought an air fryer and loves it, but since I like baking, I had no trouble making my own food most of the time. Describe some of the changes that were easy for you to make and why.

Describe some of the changes that were difficult for you to make and why.

If it wasn’t already obvious in my previous parapraph, one of the most difficult things to change was my screen time. I didn’t make any measurable improvement at all (in fact, I think my screen time may have gone up). This happened for a number of reasons, but a major obstacle I faced was lack of a clear and well-defined goal. Rather than making a nice plan and setting goals like I did for many of my other changes, I just said I would “reduce my screen time”. Next time, I want to do a better job of making sure I’ve done an equally good job of making all of my changes/doing all of my tasks. I also had some trouble at first with the plan-making thing, but as evidenced in the previous paragraphs, it ended up going well anyway.

Describe the steps you plan to take in the future.

I plan to continue doing what I’m doing in this assignment. I’ve discussed how lots of these things will take time and circumstance to improve, and for the things that I can change now, I’ll make clear goals and put them somewhere where I can read them, so I can continue reducing my screen time, stop taking absurdly long showers, and continue not using the heater in my house. Hopefully time will allow me to improve on the two looser goals as well! Overall, I’m excited to continue adjusting my habits very slightly to make a positive impact on the environment.

• October 14, 2020


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Comments

  1. Dylan October 14, 2020 - 5:41 am

    Very detailed, very informative.
    I would give this dish a 10/10

    • Bana October 14, 2020 - 5:53 am

      Thank you chef! Much appreciated.

Comments are closed.

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