Thursday, April 29, 2004
Large feet
Today I calculated my ecological footprint.
My scores indicate how much resources I use for each category, in acres (hectares): Food: 4.2 (1.7) Mobility: .5 (.3) Shelter: 6.7 (2.7) Goods/Services: 4.9 (2.7)
Basically, if everyone lived like me, we'd need 3.7 planets.
Here I thought I was doing pretty good, but I've posted my results in hectares so you can compare them to Andrea's--seems like I'm way over the average for Germany, which she says is 4.7 hectares.
Food is a killer. Pretty much, if you want to eat "animal based products" frequently, it means you consume a lot of resources. This is unfortunate, as "animal based products" includes beef, pork, chicken, fish, eggs, and dairy products, and these are, I think, pretty important parts of my diet. It also doesn't help that I live in a free-standing house, but, honestly, I live with my parents, who live in a church parsonage; it's a part of my father's salary package. We are very good about conserving energy, but it goes to show you can't live in a house at all without eating a ton of resources.
We also do our best to recycle, but like the fellow over at rightee, my area is only half friendly towards recyclers--we actually can't recycle paper here at all. The test doesn't ask at all whether you recycle--only how much trash you generate. I wonder why not--though, you know, at times recycling takes as much energy and resources as generating new product. That's where we need to do some serious rethinking--even our conscious steps to help the environment cause problems.
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