Ecological Footprint Recalculation

Before:

                         

After:

At the beginning of the quarter I calculated my footprint, and found that it would take 4.3 planet earths if everyone in the world lived like I did. That was a lot, and after setting a lot of goals and sticking to them, I am proud to see that I reduced my footprint by almost a whole planet. Looking back at my first set of results, I can see that the biggest area I reduced was my consumption of goods. This I believe is partly due to the fact that I made a goal to start buying less packaged, more natural foods. I wanted to learn how to cook more, and try to buy items that were made at least semi locally. Though it's taken a slight toll on my wallet, knowing that I'm helping the environment and local growers makes it worth it. I also noticed that after taking this class I started to recycle a lot more, and was more careful about bringing reusable bags and buying products that used less packaging. This was something I didn't set as a goal for myself, but noticed that it still had an affect on my ecological footprint, which was a pleasure to see. The other sections didn't change much, mostly because they were either pretty sustainable already and/or I couldn't make the changes within the time period. But overall, I'm very happy with my progress and am excited to continue to work on my footprint after this class and hopefully reduce my impact further.