what's your footprint?

[snugglekitty]

After watching a 30 Days episode entitled Off the Grid, I decided to try taking an ecological footprint survey.

Here's a link to the survey: http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp

My score was 12, which is half that of the average American. Most of that is because I don't own a car. It helps also that I recycle and eat local food much of the time, and don't eat much meat.



Things I already know would improve my footprint, that would be feasible:

- Getting a low-pressure showerhead
- And one of those things that makes your toilet use less water
- Really stopping using shopping bags (right now I use them about half the time)
- Planting a tree
- Apartment composting
- Signing up for green power (which is supposed to be available in my area in a few more months)

Things I was surprised that the quiz didn't ask about:

- How long and how often we take showers
- Whether and how often we use air conditioners
- How much non-food stuff we buy (although that may be hard to quantify) and whether it's new
- Average temperature we keep our thermostat at (although we don't actually have a thermostat, it would definitely affect how much gas we were using if we did)

It's also interesting that the interaction between population and resources wasn't mentioned much. Ie, if we had fewer people, there would be more acreage to go around.

The folks in the TV show got their footprint down to 3 from something like 30, I think... and that was with using pretty extreme measures, like composting your own body waste, living off the grid, and growing all your own food. I wouldn't go that far.

Comments

[hugh-mannity.livejournal.com]

My footprint is 16. I can't get to work by public transport. If I were able to do so, then without making any other changes, I'd cut it to 14.

I'm still below the average for an American, which is a Good Thing.