How to assess the personal ecological footprint

Question One 

Results 

By Land Type By Consumption Category 

Build Up Land 0.2 gha Food 1.8 gha

Forest Products 0.6 gha Shelter 0.2 gha

Crop Land 1.6 gha Mobility 2.6 gha

Grazing Land 0.1 gha Goods 0.9 gha

Fishing Grounds 0.1 gha Services 1.1 gha

Carbon Foot Print 3.9 gha

Question Two 

The category of lifestyle that had biggest impact on the Footprint was the Carbon Footprint. The Footprint had 60% of the total Ecological Footprint. In addition, Carbon dioxide emissions in tonnes per year were 11.5%, which imposes great environmental impacts on the ecological Footprint.

Question Three 

Surprisingly, Carbon Footprint had the greatest impact on my lifestyle, with the highest record of 3.9 gha.

Question Four 

A very important category of lifestyle that was not included in the Ecological Footprint is waste disposal. The question would have addressed the various methods of disposing waste products, whether the wastes are biodegradable or not, and the level of their effect to the environment.

Question Five 

The number of planet Earths that were needed to support my lifestyle were summing to 3.9.

Question Six 

Earth overshoot day refers to the date when human beings have used as much from nature as earth can renew in the entire year. In other words, overshot occurs when people’s demand on an ecosystem exceeds the capacity of that ecosystem to generate the resources it consumes and to absorb its carbon dioxide emissions.

Question Seven 

A global hectare is a biologically productive hectare with world average productivity. In other words, the estimated global hectares that would support my lifestyle were 1.7 global hectares.

Question Eight 

Results 

By Land Type By Consumption Category 

Build Up Land 0.2 Food 1.1

Forest Products 0.6 Shelter 0.7

Crop Land 1.6 Mobility 0.1

Grazing Land 0.1 Goods 0.3

Fishing Grounds 0.1 Services 0.3

Carbon Footprint 3.9

Question Nine 

The number of planet Earths that were needed to support my lifestyle were 1.6. Some of the adjustments that were made were the reduction of using carbon products. I also reduced the amount of resources consumed to avoid wastage.

Question Ten 

In order to reduce majority of countries to a sustainable lifestyle, human beings should embark on using renewable sources of energy that are environmentally friendly. In addition, the available resources on the Earth should be used sparingly to avoid depletion.

Question Eleven 

Humans use more of the resources that Earth can generate. This is normally evident when individuals spend many resources on non-renewable energies thereby increasing the Carbon Footprint. The resultant effect of this would be increased global warming hence, Earth would take a lot of time regaining the used resources since the number of replication would have reduced because of global warming.

Question Twelve 

Ecological Footprints can be calculated for both individuals and groups of people. For an individual person, it is calculated by adding up all people’s demand’s that compete for biologically productive space, such as cropland, fishing grounds, grazing land, and build up land. The amount of material consumed by that particular is divided by the yield of the specific land or sea area from which it is harvested. The resultant hectares are then converted to global hectares using yield and equivalent number of global hectares. According to my opinion, the method of calculating the Ecological Footprint provides a fair comparison of an individual’s ecological impact.