A few weeks ago, I challenged Eco Geek readers to take the Earth Day Network’s ecological footprint quiz, which I failed miserably with a score of 22 acres, compared to 24 acres for the national average in the U.S.
“Worldwide, there exists 4.5 biologically productive acres per person,” the quiz told me. “If everyone lived like you, we would need 5.1 planets.”
Ouch.
It turns out I’m not the only Earth fan who could be a deeper shade of green. Here are three responses from Eco Geek readers. Thanks for writing!
Karen Erickson of Everett had better results than me for sure, but she felt she could improve her score with a single trick.
So my results are 8 if I didn’t fly. That still is 1½ planets, 4.5 acres used by me. However I do fly and that doubled my results. So, for me, I need to find a way to teach without flying, which I am doing via online classes.” — Karen Erickson
Eco Geek reader Maria Millett took the quiz multiple times to see what would change her results.
This time I scored 12 acres. The 12 doesn’t include recycling, doing without, reusing, etc., so could be 9-10 acres. Thanks for including the quiz in your blog! — Maria Millett
Michael Dahlstrom of Everett was “unpleasantly surprised with his results.” Here are some excerpts from an essay he wrote after taking the quiz:
My footprint isn’t as green at I thought. What about yours? This quiz places a huge emphasis on housing, food source and use of public transportation. My print totaled 36 acres, mainly because of my housing situation in suburbia, plus most of my food comes from somewhere else (like yours, I’m sure). Even though I walk and bike some, shop within three to four miles of home, public transportation is not a convenient reality in suburbia. I thought I was living pretty green. I’m much more conservative about autos and recycling than my neighbors. I thought about this and wondered what this quiz would look like if my grandfather had taken it. He lived 1872-1945. So I tweaked the input, using my grandfather’s data, as best as I can remember.
It turns out his footprint was only 6 acres! That’s only 1.5 acres above the global average as stated by the eco-quiz! Americans today average about 26 to 28 acres. My grandfather lived on 30 acres as a farmer-rancher in the Central Valley of California from roughly 1910-1940s. He raised his own food, bought some, but all local. He ground his own flour from homegrown wheat, milked his own cow, raised and ate his own chickens and eggs. He produced melons, and other produce for sale from his 30 acres. During the Depression, they ate well and hardly noticed any change in their life.
It’s easy for me to see where we’ve been and where we are headed. … So what can we do to reverse this “take it for granted trend” we see today? Stop suburban development; stick closely to the Growth Management Act; build smaller more affordable housing near transportation hubs; increase public transportation to suburbs (not likely to happen). Reversing a trend that has continued for 75 years isn’t easy, and will be, (is now), met with anger and resistance, but do we really have a choice in the long run? — Michael Dahlstrom
If you also took the footprint quiz, let me know your results! Were you surprised? What would you have to do to improve your score?
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