Calculate Your Ecological Footprint

Everyone involved with Keep Pinellas Beautiful, both staff and volunteers, cares about leaving a positive impact on the Earth while reducing our negative impact. An interesting tool for helping us understand these impacts is the Ecological Footprint calculator. By inputting some basic information about your lifestyle into the calculator, you’ll find out how your actions impact the Earth and where you can make sustainable changes.

How Ecological Footprint Works

The idea behind the Ecological Footprint came about in the 1990s, and environmental nonprofit Global Footprint Network (GFN) formed in 2003 to bring the Ecological Footprint and other sustainable ideas to the forefront of our cultural conversation. 

The calculator is designed to measure the overall impact various human activities have on the Earth. Carbon emissions make up part of your footprint, but the calculator also considers things like waste, food resources, spatial data, and more. Through various data the Ecological Footprint has been honed to calculate the number of planet Earths a person’s lifestyle and behaviors would require, if everyone on Earth lived like that person. Another way the GFN poses this information is through your overshoot day: if everyone lived like you and we only had a year’s worth of resources, on what day of the year would we run out of resources?

Interpreting Your Results

The Ecological Footprint is best used as a general guide, not as a definitive statement on your personal sustainability or environmental friendliness. The GFN points out the model’s limitations and criticisms, and the people behind the calculator work hard to continue to improve it. Use your results to think about areas where you can make a few changes as an individual, and areas where collective action is needed.

The GFN is also careful to caution that some people cannot get their footprint below one Earth. This is because our actions don’t stand alone; what we do is cumulative within our society. For example, if our communities depend on fossil fuels for power, as an individual you can reduce your personal power use as much as possible, but you still live in an area with a lot of carbon emissions. This impacts your footprint. The true change happens when the entire community comes together to ask for and implement renewable energy.

Want to Do More?

While engaging with the calculator, you probably noticed that there’s an entire section on how much waste you produce. Waste generation and disposal is a major global concern. At the local level, engaging with KPB is a great way to tackle this issue within the Pinellas County community, especially as we get closer to Earth Day this year. Do an individual #PickUpPinellas cleanup to abate litter in your neighborhood, adopt a stretch of road to ensure your community stays litter-free, or attend an upcoming event to join other volunteers in protecting our natural environment.