Do you know your Eco-footprint?

What’s Your Ecological Footprint?
Ecological footprint indexing provides communities with a measurement of how much of the earth’s capacity and resources its residents are consuming compared to the supply available.

Ecological Footprint indexing is an effective tool because it provides a quantitative justification for moving towards sustainability on the part of municipalities. It does so in a simple way: by translating resource use into one easily understood metric – land area.

*Go to www.myfootprint.org   to find out
what kind of footprint your resource use
is leaving on your community and the world.

The Eco-footprint quiz is based on national consumption averages and is meant to give you an idea of your Ecological Footprint relative to other people in the country you live in. It is not highly detailed, but should give most people an idea of where they stand.

If you already live a sustainable lifestyle, do not be discouraged by your results. There are some portions of your Footprint that are not the direct result of your consumption habits. For example, each resident of a city is ‘responsible’ for a portion of the city’s infrastructure, such as roads, schools, and government offices, regardless of whether the resident uses those services. In addition, some options that could make your Footprint smaller are not available to you as a result of choices on the part of local decision makers, such as reliable and efficient public transportation as an alternative to driving. Therefore, an important path to reducing your Footprint is to advocate for more sustainable decisions at all levels of government.

This will make it easier for you and many others to reduce Ecological Footprints.
Ecological Footprint accounts provide a means to compare various components of consumption and ultimately serve as an indicator of sustainability – or, in the case of deficits, of unsustainability.