Check out your ecological footprint

"The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable." - Arundhati Roy
In an effort to better understand our impact on the world, I invite you to checkout the Ecofootprint Calculator. It's pretty simple and will only take about 3-4 minutes but it sets up quite nicely where you stand as to how much you use. While the questions are somewhat vague, I think it's a good tool because it causes you to think about what choices you have to make. Once you've done the test, note down the results and change a few key answers to see where you can improve and what difference it'll make. If you are comfortable, I'd love to hear what your numbers were. If you'd rather remain anonymous, feel free to email me and I can throw the numbers up in the comments section without a name.

To start it off, our lifestyle footprint was an 8 which means that if everyone in the world lived the way that we do, we would need two planets worth of raw materials. I was able to get this down to a 7 by cutting out air travel back east but that's about as far a dent I could make in it.

Oh yeah, if you can't get the map to work on the first page, hit the "low bandwidth" link in the bottom right hand corner. Sometimes the site gets bogged down but that usually works.

Live Sustainably

Dave


http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/