Calculating Your Ecological Footprint Just Got Better

Take the Ecological Footpring Quiz at www.myfootprint.org One of the first things needed in a conscious effort to reduce your “ecological footprint” is simply knowing what it is.

Take me for instance. I write or contribute to three environmental blogs, I live in San Francisco (one of the greenest cities on earth), and gave up owning a car years ago. I consider myself something of greenie, tree-hugger, eco-nut, whatever you want to call it. You’d think

According to the newly redesigned Ecological Footprint Quiz at MyFootPrint.org I have a long way to go: If everyone in the world lived like I do it would take 4.1 one Earths to maintain.

Kinda makes you stop and think.

And that’s what the new version of the website developed by Redefining Progress, a progressive public policy think tank, is all about, education and awareness.

The Quiz asks specific lifestyle questions breaking your footprint into four general categories: Carbon footprint, food footprint, housing footprint, and goods and services footprint.

Even though all but my food footprint was below the American average (carbon footprint was well below the average and my food food footprint matched the national average) I’m still consuming – per capita – over four planet Earths.

By breaking lifestyle choices down categorically you can easily see which areas in your life need re-thinking if you’re truly interested in minimizing your ecological footprint. The quiz also gives more specific suggestions for reducing you impact for each category.

The Ecological Footprint Quiz is just a website of course – it isn’t going to reduce your footprint for you. But it’s a place to begin.

The rest is up to each one of us.