Ecological Footprint
Water Use
Shower: +40
Toilet: +15
Washing the car/ watering the garden: +30
Water Usage subtotal: 85
Stuff
Household cleaners: -5
Pesticides: 0
Garbage: +30
Disposable Stuff: +20
Money: 0
Stuff subtotal: 45
Shelter
Rooms in house: 11
People in house: 4
Rooms per person 2.75
Rooms per person: +70
Turn off lights/ appliances: -20
Shelter subtotal: 50
Transportation
Bike: +5
Transit: +30
Car: +100
Time in car: +20
Cars owned: +40
Size of car: +100
Transportation subtotal: 295
Fun
How much land has been changed: +60
Computer: +70
Gear: +40
Fun Subtotal: 170
Food
Where food is from: +20
Organic food: +20
Compost: -5
Food thrown away: +15
Non-organic beef: +40
Non-organic pork: +15
Free range chicken: +5
Wild fish diet: +40
Free range eggs: +20
Fruit: +20
Vegetables: +20
Food Subtotal: 220
Totals
Total points: 865
My ecological footprint is 8.65 hectares
My comparison to others:
7.9, 12.16, 7.9, 6.8, 15.6
Average: 10.072
My ecological footprint is lower than the average from the people that I compared with however it was still higher than the average Canadian ecological footprint.
10 things that increased my score:
- I eat a lot of meat
- Ride in a car and I take transit
- I don’t try hard to avoid disposable items
- I take too much food sometimes and have to throw some of it away
- Skiing and mountain biking require a lot of land to be changed
- I eat wild fish even though I don’t like it very much
- I don’t pay attention to where my food comes from
- I put new clothes on everyday
- My family usually uses a fairly big SUV, but we also have a four door smaller car
- I don’t always use the compost for food waste
5 things that I can try to do to decrease my ecological footprint.
- Try and avoid using disposable items when I can.
- Pay more attention to how much food I am taking and taking less then I need instead of more
- I won’t eat fish often
- Reuse pants and sweaters if I can
- Try to take the bus and skytrain instead of a car when I can
I basically chose all of these because they’ll make a big impact and they are all pretty easy for me to do so I should actually be able to do them all.
- I’ll avoid using disposable items by using a container instead of bags, avoid plastic straws and if I’m buying something to eat or use, I will try and avoid stuff that are in a container that will be thrown away.
- When eating at home I’ll take a bit less then I think I’ll eat then I can get more after if I need. I’ll also try to eat leftovers from the fridge more often so that doesn’t get thrown away.
- I’ll try my best to avoid eating fish which should be very easy, the only exception I’m going to make is sushi because I do like that and we still only have that around once a month.
- At the end of the day if my pants or my sweater is still clean and doesn’t smell bad then I can wear them the next day, for example one of my shirts has something called Polygiene which is supposed to keep it smelling good and cleaner even if it’s worn for a couple of days.
- To avoid using the car I will take the bus or sky train when ever I can but I can’t always do that especially after it’s dark.
Reflection:
The easiest change to make was not eating fish because that isn’t really something that I like very much anyways, and I didn’t eat any over the last few weeks. It was also easy for me to take less food once I got used to taking a bit less. It was harder for me to avoid using disposable items because they are everywhere and I definitely could have done a lot better at that, but I still made an improvement. It was also really hard to avoid using the car, but I still took the bus to and from school everyday and to a few other places and I also rode my bike to get around quite a bit. One of the obstacles I faced was when it was raining in the morning my mom offered to drive me down to the bus stop and I have to walk around 2 km to the bus stop so it was really tempting but I still walked. Especially when it was raining it was hard to wear clothes for two days in a row because they all got wet and dirty. The last obstacle I faced is that we went to Whistler for a weekend which took a lo of driving and I know I used a lot of disposable items there like bags, paper plates from restaurants and snacks. In the future I will try to keep doing all of these because they are all simple and I can keep doing them. Overtime I can start to use the car less and avoid more disposable items because I’ll be getting used to not using them.