What is an Ecological Footprint?
Background
Ecological footprints, or ‘eco-footprints’ are a way of representing our human impact on the environment by translating this impact into an area of land. It is an expression of how much space on the planet our various activities take up such as the land needed to grow the food we eat, the land needed for our buildings, the land needed to absorb the waste we produce, the land needed for other living creatures and so on.
All the resources we consume and the waste we produce can be converted into an area of land – our “footprint” –and the bigger the footprint the worse the impact on the earth. It is a simple and powerful idea as it combines all the different environmental impacts into one understandable measure. For example, the average footprint for a person in Wales for example, is 5.25 global hectares (g/h). This compares with over 10 g/h for a person in the USA and less than 1 g/h for a person living in Ethiopia.
It is possible to calculate the eco-footprint of an individual, a school, a business, a town or a country. This website helps you find out your school’s footprint. Just Register then fill in the Calculator form, and with a little dedication in tracking down your data – it’s done.
Armed with this information you can supercharge your efforts to become a more sustainable school. You’ll know what matters and what doesn’t, you’ll have another tool to help you make a difference and reduce your schools impact on the environment.
How can I calculate my schools eco footprint?
We have created a web based Calculator that is based on your schools consumption of -
• Energy
• Water
• Transport
• Buildings
• Food
• And the amount of non food Waste produced by the school
Calculating eco footprints CAN be very complex but our calculator is relatively simple to use in schools. The consumption of the six things above make up more than 90% of a school footprint and we have selected data that is easily available and can collected by schools to accurately represent each one.
These are six of the seven categories in EcoSchools Wales, so our calculator can help you if you going for an Eco Schools Award. The information needed is easily available – and some can be collected by your pupils.
What does footprint size mean?
• The average ecological footprint for a person in Wales is 5.25 global hectares.
• The world average Ecological Footprint is 2.3 g/h
• But, there is only an average of 1.9 g/h of biologically productive land and sea area available for each person – not counting the space needed by other species.
• It doesn’t take a difficult calculation to realise that our consumption and waste production today exceeds the Earth’s capacity to create new resources and absorb our waste, and
• that the lifestyles of people in some countries are more unsustainable than others.
We are wasting the natural resources (sometimes called natural capital) that support our current way of life and reducing the Earth’s capacity to support future life.
When you calculate your school footprint you will find that it is much lower than the average footprint per person for Wales. This doesn’t mean that schools are sustainable. It just means that the Schools footprint is part of the bigger footprint. Pupils are only at school for part of the day, part of the week and part of the year.
We will achieve sustainability only when every person can lead a satisfying life within the Earth’s biological capacity.
Footprints and other ways of measuring Sustainability
It is important to stress that Ecological Footprints area measure of “ecological sustainability” – whether we are living within the planet’s ecological carrying capacity.
Many other ways of measuring sustainability at a school level are available at a national and local level such as Eco Schools, The Green School Audit, Sustainable Schools . These measurements often require an audit of the school and usually include a wide range of other indicators of sustainability at a school level such as whether the school has a policy of Sustainable Development, the integration of sustainable development in the curriculum, how the schools uses it’s grounds, staff training of sustainable development, and so on. Often aspects of cultural and social sustainability are stressed. These are all important things to measure and improve.
In one way therefore, the ecological footprint is quite a narrow measurement of sustainability, but in another way it is the most important. If we do not live within the resource capacity of our planet, then other aspects of sustainability are irrelevant. The Ecological footprint is a measure of how well we are achieving this fundamental goal.
How are footprints calculated
An example of an ecological footprint – driving a car
It is possible to calculate the ecological footprint of almost every human activity! Take the example of driving a car where the main waste product are the gases produced. This waste can be converted to an area of land to include in a footprint calculation through calculating the area of forest needed to absorb the gases emitted
• A typical medium-sized car produces 160grams of CO2 per km.
• Driving 10,000km per year would produce a total of 1.6 tonnes of CO2.
• A conifer forest takes in 3 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year as the trees grow using photosynthesis.
• To remove 1.6 tonnes of CO2 therefore requires 0.53 hectares of forest (1.6/3).
So, just over half a hectare of forest will remove the carbon dioxide produced by one car in one year. This is an area of forest about the size of a football pitch and is the car’s ecological footprint whilst you are driving it.
However this is not the ecological footprint for your whole car because the figure does not include all the
• energy taken to produce the car and
• raw materials needed to make it, or
• space it will take up when you get rid of it!