ECOLOGICAL
FOOTPRINT
Count Yourself IN!!
Carl Sagan, a scientist, once described our planet as a “pale
blue dot floating in space.” It’s a good description because
over 70% of the earth’s surface is water. There is no other
place that we can go to get the things we need to live. The
earth gives us water, food and keeps us warm. It gives us
everything we need in order to live.
You will spend every second of your life on earth. It is your
home. It is beautiful. And it is special because it has life on it.
The Earth is home to lots of living things – you, your pets,
your family, the polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba and even
the baby beluga whales in the St. Lawrence Seaway. We all
live here and we have to make room for everyone. We have
to share.
Scientists can add up all the little things we do every day to measure
how well we are sharing. Imagine a house. If you build a bigger
house, then you need more wood, bricks, furniture and electricity.
More of everything. Think about the extra wood you will need for a
larger house. Someone somewhere must cut down more trees in a
forest to get more wood. If you were to take a fieldtrip through that
forest, it would be smaller. The larger house has left a smaller forest.
This reduces the habitat area of the wildlife that called that forest
home.
If you walk along a beach, you have an effect on the beach.
You leave a footprint behind in the sand. Everyday our
actions and our choices add up and have an effect on the
earth. We call this effect an Ecological Footprint. It’s not a
real footprint, but it is the way we measure the effect and
impacts our choices have on the Earth.
An Ecological Footprint is a way to measure what we use on
the earth. It helps us share and compare our lives with other
people on the earth.
To measure our Ecological Footprint, we count all the things
we use each day to live the way we do. We add up the plants
and animals we eat; the water we drink and use to cook our
foods or clean with; the wood and oil we use to build and
heat our homes and the gas we use in our tractors and cars;
the plants we grow to make our clothing; and the things we
throw away.
We use hectares to measure an area of land.
Our Ecological Footprint is the area of land we use to
live the way we do, so we use hectares to measure
it. A hectare is equal to a square of land that is one
hundred metres by one hundred metres.
That is as large as the grassy area of a 400 m track.
It is almost exactly the size of a baseball field.
The earth is able to produce lots of food and water and
shelter for everyone and everything that lives here.
There is enough room for everyone if we all share it
equally. The “Fair Earth Share” per person would be
about the size of 3 ½ football fields or 11 NHL hockey
rinks or 1.8 hectares. And there would still be lots of
room for all the animals.
Some people live in a way that uses very few
resources. They have small footprints. People
in Afghanistan have a footprint of 0.3
hectares. People in India use .9 hectares.
People in Jamaica use 1.1 hectares. If we all
lived that way there would be plenty of room
for everyone and all the animals.
In Canada, our average Ecological Footprint is 7.6
hectares per person. That would be equal to 760
metres by 100 metres. That is about the size of 48 NHL
hockey rinks. Or 17 football fields. Or about 5 city
blocks. 7.6 hectares could hold the Great Pyramid of
Giza with 4 football fields to spare.
If everyone on earth had a footprint as big as the
average Canadian, we would need four planet
earths to give us all the stuff we want. That’s
because Canadians use more energy than anyone
else on earth. We use more water, throw away
more garbage and buy more things than most
people on the earth. We are often called “super
consumers”.
And our one earth, the beautiful planet we call
home, can’t support all the people living like
we do. As Canadians, we are using four times
our fair Earth share. Many other people live
with far less so we can live the way we do.
This hurts the earth and the people who have
to live with less than what they need in order
survive well. Eventually we will run out of
things. And other animals and plants will run
out of things too.
We can turn things around and make our
Ecological Footprint smaller. We can create
more green space. We can use less energy.
We can clean up the water and the air and
stop making so much garbage. We can start
just by making better choices.
Imagine if every one of us did one little thing.
If every one of the 35,000,000 Canadians
bought one less bottle of water a year,
imagine how that would all add up. That’s
35,000,000 fewer bottles to make, and 35
million fewer bottles to throw away.
Turn off the lights when you leave the room.
Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth.
Eat a local apple. Walk to school if you can.
If you do, it makes a difference. You can make
an even bigger difference if you convince your
family and friends to join you.
Count Yourself In. Reduce
your Ecological Footprint!