Ecological Footprint

The Plan

Original Footprint – 7.6 hectares

Other Footprints – Natalie: 12.16, Carolyn: 7.9

Footprint increasing factors –

  • I watch a lot of TV and go on devices such as my computer a lot for games, homework, etc.
  • A lot of the meat we eat is not organic
  • I take showers that are much longer than I’d like them to be in terms of my ecological footprint
  • I flush the toilet every time I go to the bathroom when I should sometimes just leave it
  • There a quite a few items of clothing that I do not really wear and I usually change my outfit every day
  • We do not recycle batteries, which is really bad
  • I throw away a decent amount of garbage on a daily basis
  • My family does not have water-saving toilets or devices besides our shower head
  • We eat some food that is not from BC
  • The amount of money I spend on a typical day

Things I would like to change –

  • I would like to limit my screen time to homework and some TV (maybe 3 episodes at most) in the evenings with my family
    • This is something that not only will decrease my ecological footprint, but it will also free up time to do other, more productive things.
  • I would like to shorten my time spent in the shower to 10 minutes or less by not getting distracted. I help this by not listening to music while showering.
    • I have been wanting to do this for a while and will also increase efficiency and free up time that is usually spent in the shower
  • I would like to flush the toilet only when necessary
    • This is something that can help my footprint but it’s also extremely easy to do
  • I would like to wear more of the clothes that I own and wear the same outfit 2 days in a row as long as it is fairly clean (Not sweaty or muddy, etc.)
    • I really want to do this because I have some clothes that I actually like, but I don’t wear them because I get in a routine of only a few outfits, so this will help my “fashion” ;), and will make me feel less guilty about keeping so many clothes if I don’t wear them
  • I would like to eat less meat and when I do I want it to be organic. I can do this by asking my parents to cook less meat and encouraging them to buy only organic meat
    • The non-organic meat is so much worse than the organic in terms of the environment, so I really want to change for the better

The Reflection

  • Limiting my screen time was fairly easy in terms of not watching as much TV in the day, and I haven’t been going on my phone as much as I used to, but I kind of went past my 3 episode plan a lot. I am proud of the lack of screen time on my phone and laptop for entertainment purposes but my TV watching has only gone down a little. I am going to keep trying to stay off my personal devices for entertainment in the future.
  • Shortening my showers was hard because it’s a habit to spend a lot of time in the shower and I definitely didn’t reach my 10 minute goal but I think that I improved at least a slight bit.
  • I wore my clothes a lot more repetitively in which case I wore the same outfit 2 days in a row quite a few times or at least in the span of 3 days. I wore some new clothes that I hadn’t worn yet, but not all. This was easy because it’s even easier than having to pick out a new outfit every day, which is already pretty simple to do. I only faced a couple small obstacles with this goal. One was that I didn’t want people to judge me for wearing the same outfit twice in a row, which is kind of irrational, but kind of hard to overcome nonetheless. And the other was that some of the clothes that I don’t wear I realized were not worn because they are really seasonal, like thin tees and tank tops for summer or cozy long sleeve shirts for winter, and because the weather wasn’t suited for these clothing items, I couldn’t really wear them in the past 2 weeks. But I will in the future when the weather is different
  • I flushed the toilet only when necessary a lot better these last 2 weeks and it was very easy except for the fact that it’s become a habit for me to flush as soon as I finish, without thinking about it. So that was kind of an issue, but once I overcame that it was a piece of cake.
  • It was harder than I originally thought to stay away from (non-organic and possibly otherwise) meat, because it’s harder for me to control what my family’s diet consists of, since I don’t do the shopping. But in the future I do want to get more involved with shopping and making meals so that I can make more contributions to the decision-making part of it to try to decrease my personal and my family’s collective ecological footprint