ecological footprint

The ecological footprint measures the impact of a person or community on the environment, expressed as the amount of land required to sustain their use of natural resources.

https://www.footprintnetwork.org

When considering the impact I make on the world, I didn't think much of it. I think of myself as a relatively sustainable person - I recycle, I try to compost and I don't generally eat a lot of meat, but after taking the ecological footprint test to determine my accuracy on my statement, it came to my attention that I need to change my ways. This test generally asks the basics of your everyday lifestyle, and from that it will provide you with your overshoot day, how many earths it will take to sustain your living habits & recommendations on how to cut back. I got an overshoot day of August 24 & not to mention a whole other half an earth to sustain people like me.

"Overshoot Day marks the day on the calendar when humanity has used the resources that it takes the planet the full year to regenerate." Global Footprint Network

Finding out that my overshoot day was August 24 scared me because people who live like me in fact can't even live a full year without running out of resources. I live in a place where it is easily accessible to recycle and compost as well as other methods to reduce the populations footprint. Not to mention am highly encouraged to do so, but what about the places where these resources to reduce our footprint isn't as easily accessible? There are people in this world that do not have this accessibility when it comes to preserving the world. We take the world for granted and need to make changes to preserve the world we call home.

Displayed above is the resources that I mostly exhaust. And from that it shows that my diet affects the world in a negative way, which is very eye opening. Who knew eating chicken for dinner (nearly every night), is harming the environment! Shelter becomes another exhausted area. Being a college student, I am not very conscious about where I live, as long as its cheap & clean. An eco-friendly house just does not become one of my options because those houses particularly become a lot more expensive. Following close behind is my carbon footprint - relating to mobility. I am currently interning at an office that is 12 miles away three times a week with difficult public transportation options - seeing that I would need to ride multiple busses to get there. Driving there and back three times a week does hurt the environment with CO2 emissions.With this in mind, I jumped over to the Drawdown Ecochallenge website and chose three ways to reduce my footprint. https://drawdown.ecochallenge.org/dashboards/challenges

THE SOLUTION

There are three ways that I could change/incorporate into my busy lifestyle to become a more eco-friendly human being. Those being:

1) Change my diet.

Meat processing takes a lot from the earth, from water to factory emissions, It is the economically friendly decision to cut meat eating down to a minimum. There are many alternatives to achieving protein goals that meats provide, and rather than having meat as the reliable 'every day' meal, I have decided to switch my system. I will create different meals that will still give me the nutrients I need but in a more balanced earth friendly way. And reduce animal products to one meal per day.

2) Carpool.

With my interning office located farther than anticipated and the CO2 emissions stacking up from going back and forth, I have decided that the alternative would be carpooling. Public transportation would be more idealistic, but the fact that I would have to take multiple busses to get there, carpooling would be my best bet 3 days a week. To implement this into my lifestyle during those three days of interning, I would collaborate with a group of other interns and create a system of carpooling since we all come from the same area.

3) Use more energy renewable resources in our home.

When taking the ecological footprint test, It came to my attention that the house we live in does not use any eco-friendly products. A lot could be done with energy saving. The solution? Changing the light bulbs to a more energy efficient one along with using heat & keeping the lights off when in non use. I will attempt to change 10 lightbulbs in our house and leave the heat off 3 days a week. Our home is well insulated which is a benefactor to keeping the heat off, and with changing not only the lightbulbs but our habits, our home would become a more sustainable one.