Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Eco Footprint Calculator

     Today in class, we did a small project that is called "Eco Footprint Calculator." We used a small laptop and went on the website and it asked us questions based on quantity of how much we use or intake. For example, it asked "How many hours do you fly every year?" "How often do you ride with someone else?" "How much food is processed, packaged, and not locally grown?" Every question we answered was then calculated to represent how much we used in our real lives. The questions were asked in a level way where we got to move the little bar to the right or left to show how frequent of something. At the end the website showed us small diagrams based on our results. One showed how many earths it would take to survive. Another showed a pie chart and dated our data in percents. The other was a type of bar graph which represents the amount of acres to support our lifestyle.
     My results were 4.1 earths to provide enough resources to support people if everyone lived like me. Viewing my results and seeing how much it is that I use from earth is a lot. It also makes me think about what I can do to reduce that. There are many ways to reduce your individual effect on the environment. One of those ways are carpooling. More people being in a car helps reduce the amount we pollute in the air. If everyone were to take their own car, that would be worse. Public transportation is also a good way of reducing air pollution. Reducing the amount of energy we use is also a good way and turning off lights when not needed. Energy saving products such as light bulbs are more beneficial for us and the environment. By doing simple things to reduce harm done on the environment, we should really take this into consideration because in a way, it's like giving back to the environment because it gives us life supporting resources we need.

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