10 Ways to Reduce Your Ecological Footprint

September 17th, 2007 Wade

I have big FEET! It looks like my ecological footprint is huge. Even though I buy food at a farmers market often, drive a fuel efficient car, ride a bike to work sometimes, recycle, and buy energy efficient bulbs. To find out I went to Ecofoot.org and took the quiz. Here are my results…

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 5.9 PLANETS.

In the words Christopher Walken as The Continental on SNL, “Wowee Wow Wow”. I thought I was green. Going through this helped me realize that I’m not green at all, I am making some big Eco Faux Pas. For instance, here is where my sins lie; Traveling by plane, Eating Meat often, Living in a big house. I live with my wife, and the two of us share a 2,000 square foot home, I travel for work alot and take at least one international flight per year, and I eat meat two meals a day. The meat part usually throws people off. What does that have to do with anything? Well, there are a couple of reasons. For one, animals take up space. Cows, chickens, and pigs need acres of farmland. They also produce quite a bit of waste which accounts for a huge portion of the worlds greenhouse gases. As the population grows, the more meat eaters we have, the more need we have for animals, and thus, the more greenhouse gases we produce, and the more forest we cut down.

Here are 10 easy ways you can reduce your footprint:

1. Each time you replace a bulb in your home put an energy efficient bulb in its place.
2. Reduce the amount of meat you eat. I love chicken people. But I think I could eat veggies 3 or 4 more times a week.
3. Next car you buy, buy one that gets better gas mileage.
4. Next house you buy, downsize. How much space do you really need. We have a guest room AND an office. Couldn’t we just have one room for that?
5. Remove one plane trip from your itinerary this year. Cut out a business trip, or take a local trip rather than flying for vacation.
6. Ride your bike. This one is a no-brainer. Ride your bike to work, over to a friends house, or down to the store to pick up a 6er. Seriously. It’s alot of fun. It’s exercise. And it’s good for the earth.
7. Cancel your newspaper subscription and cut down on junk mail. Don’t give your mailing address out unless you know they won’t sell it. This will reduce the amount of junk you get in your mailbox and reduce the number of trees being cut. And read your news online rather than in print.
8. Buy locally. This one is really easy too, and can be a fun process. Visit the local farmers market to buy your veggies. Look for local products in the grocery and take a trip out into the country and buy produce or baked goods from the local farmers.
9. Recycle. I can’t say how easy this is. My household produces one 13 gallon bag of trash per week or less. We produce double that in recyclced materials. Just call your local recycling company and sign up for pick-up. If you don’t have it, then just save your stuff in big totes and take it in once a month. You’ll feel better about yourself.
10. And here’s one all of us can do. Vote for candidates that want to make real change for the environment. We all have our political affiliations. But things are getting bad with global warming and we can’t stop what’s going to happen in the next 50 years. But for our kids and grandkids sakes, we can at least try to make some policy changes that force big companies to make more eco-friendly decisions so 100 years from now we don’t have mass famine and drought.

And here’s a bonus tip: Do like I just did, spread the word to your friends. I’ve bookmarked Ecofoot.org so I can go back everytime I make a lifestyle change and see how my footprint shrinks. My goal is go get down to two planets this year.

Entry Filed under: Environment, General, Top 10 Lists