Eye Opener: Ecological Footprint

The first quiz that I took was called the Earth Day Network Footprint Calculator. It was actually a fun quiz, until I got my results. It said that if everyone lived the way I do we would need 5.3 planet earths to survive. I am kind of embarrased that I live this way. I didn't realize how much harm I am doing to the environment, or how much of its' resources I am using up. It also says that to support my lifestyle it would take 23.5 global acres of the Earth's productive area. The most being for land to get energy! This one quiz alone had opened my eyes to how I live and things that I NEED to change, and immediately! I for one am going to try and start eating more organic and locally grown foods, because I do eat a lot of processed foods, which is transported here using gas to get here! It is like a chain of events to harm our environment just because I eat processed foods, which is easily changable!

I also did the The Cleaner and Greener® "Pollution from Electricity Use" Calculator and it showed that for a year the electricity that we use in my house produces 18,993 pounds of green house gas emmissions! That is a ton!! No wonder our earths atmosphere is getting thicker!! I think in my house for the most part we turn everything off when we aren't using it and are a little more aware of electricity, so I can't imagine people who don't pay attention to things like that. They must be producing a lot more! Also you have to think that the pounds we are producing is for 4 people in an average sized house and there are billions of households out there!

I did one more little exercise and I think that EVERYONE should do this one just to see the results, because I can't put them all in here. It is really shocking and neat to see how where we live relates to other places. It's a pollution calculator and you put in your zip code and it show you how we rank among other counties in the U.S. with pollution rates. It also shows you other things, like what kind of toxins we produce the most of. It is really neat. One thing about Duluth that stuck out the most to me was that we are rated one of the dirtiest/worst counties in the U.S. for releasing recognized carcinogens into the air. We are in the 80-90 percentile range for releasing carcinogens. I was shocked to see St. Louis County as one of the worst in the country. Duluth isn't even that big, so if you think of all the other big counties/cities in the world I feel like our earth is doomed! On a lighter note though, we are considered one of the cleanest/best counties for air releases of recognized developmental toxicants, so that makes me feel a little better.

I hope that some of these quizzes and quick exercises will help some of you guys realize some little things that we can change in our daily lives to help our environment!