Ecological Footprint Essay

436 Words2 Pages
What is Ecological Footprint? How many planets would we need if everyone lived like us? An ecological footprint measures the total amount of land and resources used. It includes our carbon footprint but goes further. It finds out our ecological footprint by answering questions about our lifestyle. It measures how our choices affect the environment and whether we are living beyond the capacity of the planet. I went to the website: http://myfootprint.org/ and calculated my ecological footprint as of today, 3 years back and 5 years from now. This data is summarized in the table below: | Ecological Foot Print | If everyone lived like me then No. of Earths required | Place, nature of work | 3 years back | 8.71 | 0.55 | Gurgaon, Software Engineer | Today | 5.57 | 0.35 | Student | 5 Years from Now | 8.40 | 0.53 | Any of the Indian Metro Cities, Consultant | Quiz result on the website said that “I am living an ecologically conscientious lifestyle”. Then I researched the website further and found that on an average, foot print for USA is around 8, for UK it is around 5 and for India it is 0.7, according to which My foot print is on the higher side. I can understand my high ecological footprint because I was living a metro lifestyle and I was spending every penny earned on the various luxuries. Furthermore, when I look at my data, I can see a major dip in my ecological footprint now because I moved to Jamshedpur where I am studying management and I am no longer using many luxuries which I was using earlier. For example earlier I was using Car to commute between my house and my office but now I am not using it anymore which reduces my carbon footprint. When I look at my future lifestyle I can foresee that I’ll be again using many luxuries and hence will increase my footprint. However now I got a high level idea of what can reduce my footprint in future so I’ll

More about Ecological Footprint Essay

Open Document