It's Easy Being Green: My Ecological Footprint
On Mondays, Michael explores the world of environmentalism and its intersection with queer culture in the column It’s Easy Being Green, despite what Kermit says.
I’ve described in previous post part of my motivation towards living a green life. Today, I’m going to explore the different aspects of one’s life that can be “greened.” I’m going to do this by taking an Ecological Footprint quiz.
The concept of an ecological footprint has been around for a while. I think the term “footprint” in this case comes from archicture, where a building’s footprint is the amount of land the building takes up. Your ecological footprint is the amount of resources your life takes up. The idea is that you can figure out how much of an impact you and your lifestyle are having on our planet, the source of all our resources. I have the eco footprint quiz from Redefining Progress all queued up, so let’s see how I do.
The first screen asks some basic demographic information, incuding in which country I live, what my income is, and the number of people in my household. I fill in the basics and move on. The next screen asks what sort of climate zone I live in (Temperate zone), the size of my home (1250 sqft), and the sources of energy used in our home (gas and electricity). I would imagine these questions are starting to get at the amount and source of energy needed to heat and cool our house. It also asks what percentage of the energy we use comes from renewable sources. I believe that I signed up for PEPCO’s renewal energy program, getting 50% of our household electricity from a wind farm.
Next, it asks about the transportation modes I use, and how many miles per year of each I travel. The options include automobile, bus, subway and air. Calculating the number of miles per mode I travel annually is pretty challenging, but I figure I’ll just guestimate: My trip on Metro to work every day is about 2 miles, and I use Metro to get to work maybe 100 days out of the year, so I’m guessing 400 miles on Metro. I also take the bus a lot, so I’ll guess 200 miles on the bus. I do take taxis and an occasional zip car, so I have to include automobile miles as well. The hardest part is air travel, since I do take trips but I have no idea how many miles I do on average every year. I’ll guess about 5000, which is not even enough mileage to fly to the west coast and back, which I’ve already done once this year. When you put in miles under auto travel, it then asks for the make and model of your car, and whether you share rides. I use zip car and taxi cabs, so it’s hard for me to specify what sort of vehicle I use sine they’re different every time. I guess mid-sized, and say that yes I always share rides.
The next screen asks about any energy saving technologies and habits at work in my home, and where my house is located. As for energy saving technologies, I choose compact flourescent bulbs and energy efficient appliances. Habits I employ include turning off lights when leaving the room, drying clothes on a line instead of a machine, and turning off computers and monitors when not in use. Other options either don’t apply to me (keeping the thermostat down during winter: we have central/steam heat) or haven’t quite registered on my radar screen (using power strips to turn off stand-by lights). I guess I should watch the Oprah episode about energy vampires. It also asks whether I’ve purchased any carbon offsets associated with home energy and transportation. While I do purchase offsets when renting cars, I do it so rarely that it wouldn’t registerer, so I choose no.
The next screen is all about diet. Being a hard core vegetarian, I should clean up on this section. First is type of diet I have. It distinguishes between Vegan and Vegetarian. At first I think I should check Vegan, since I am basically “vegan plus cheese”. However, the description for Vegetarian says “mostly plant-based with some dairy” which is a pretty good summary of my diet. It asks where I obtain “most” of my food. This is a tough question, because I do a CSA during the growing season, but during the winter I get all my produce at Whole Foods. I choose a compromise by selecting “natural food store” since I do grocery trips to supplement the farmer’s market produce I get from the CSA. “Certified organic?” Most of the time. How many meals per day? Two large ones and one small one. (Breakfast is toast with almond butter and coffee. Sometimes a banana.) Do I have or share a garden? No, sadly.
Now back to housing. What sort of house do I have? A unit in a large (20+) apartment building. Was our house built with renewable or recycled materials? Probably not, since it was built in 1915. What percentage of our home furnishings are purchased used or are made from sustainable sources? Ooh, good question. I choose “almost all” since I think, literally, I don’t have a single piece of furniture that came to me unused. Now onto water efficiency. Our apartment doesn’t have any water saving features, such as low-flow shower heads (hate them!), dual-flush toilets or rainwater collection systems, so I have to move on to water saving habits. Minimize flushing and shower time? Yep. Run dishwasher and clothes washer only when full? Yep. Bio-degradable cleaning products? Nearly all of the time. I assume this impacts water because so many of our cleaning products go down the drain.
I think I’m finally on the last screen, which asks about goods and services. Do I live within my means, or spend a lot on credit? I’m pretty frugal, so I check the medium option. How often do I buy new things to replace old things? Hm. Odd question, but I check the option that is the greenest: “I tend to use things until I genuinely need to replace them.” How many “standard sized” garbage does our household fill each week. Honestly, I think we take out our garbage less than once per week. Most of the stuff that comes into our house gets recycled. If we had the facilities to compost our kitchen scraps, we’d probably only take out the trash once per month! I choose “less than one’ and move on, to the recycling question, which asks the proportion of all the recyclables (paper, glass, alumnum, plastic, electronics) I recycle. I check “almost all” for all of them. It then asks about clothing made from recycled or renewable fibers, such as hemp. While I prefer unbleached organic cotton clothing, it’s not all too available, so I have to choose “almost never.”
Yes, it was the last screen!!! The results…
If everyone on the planet lived my lifestyle, we would need 3.72 Earths. 3.72?!? Holy shit! I thought I was living a really green, sustainable lifestyle. And if everyone on the planet lived like me, we’d need nearly 4 earths? Well, my foot print is much lower than the average for the US. My carbon footprint is nearly a third lower than the average, and my food footpring is probably two-thirds that of the average. I guess I’m doing pretty well when compared to the average. But really, I have a hard time imagining getting my footpring smaller. I’ll continue to investigate the ways and share them with you in this column.
What about you? What’s your ecological footprint? Take the quiz and leave your scores in the comments.
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