What's Your Ecological Footprint?
Take this short 14 question quiz to get a rough idea of your personal impact on the environment. Clearly I have a LONG way to go to improve my footprint. The quiz told me if everyone lived like me, we'd need 5.4 Earths to support ourselves!
Here are some specific steps I can take to reduce my footprint:
- Ride the bus more often. After I move into my new neighborhood in a week and a half, the bus will come right by our house. It's free too! I'm sure I can use this for short trips to the store, the library, etc.
- Carpool. I get great gas mileage, but I'm not sharing it with anyone during the work week. I work in a large industrial park and I leave every day at 5pm. So I'm sure I can find more people who live in my neighborhood and work in the same area.
- Make more energy efficiency investments in my home - I'm incredibly anal about turning off lights and not wasting water already, but I know I can do more. Until every lightbulb in my house is a CFL, I won't be satisfied.
- Compost - I already recycle quite a bit, but for some reason my garbage can is still full every week. Reducing food waste and composting what we do waste would help a lot.
- Buy more locally grown food - One of my co-workers sent me some information on farm co-op services in my area that deliver produce to your door each week. The food is locally grown and organic. So you're not only reducing the overall transportation impact to bring the food in from farms across the country (or world), but you're also supporting the local economy and encouraging chemical-free farming.
- Sweat (or wear sweaters) - I'm going to be turning my thermostat up 2 degrees in the summer and down 2 degrees in the winter, and I'll deal.
So what's your score? What are you going to do to change it?