Test Your Ecological footprint

Do you ever take the time out of your busy day to consider how your personal activities affect other people and the place on Earth where you live? If you do then you should consider your ecological footprint and its effect on the people and place where you live. This would be especially important for a developing country like Belize where there is still time to establish standards of living that are sustainable.

There are approximately 300, 000 people in Belize, not including many visitors that land on Belize’s shores every day. Because Belize has many pristine environments, some of which are protected, it is important to try and understand what impact the population has on its environments and ecosystems by the lifestyles that people follow who live in Belize or while visiting Belize.

How much land area does it take to support your lifestyle? Take the GFN quiz to find out your Ecological Footprint, discover your biggest areas of resource consumption, and learn what you can do to tread more lightly on the earth. The Ecological Footprint examines the scientific, cultural and policy factors affecting human-environmental interactions and the path to sustainability.

The Global Footprint Calculator provides an interactive way for you to answer questions about various aspects of your lifestyle that affect your Ecological Footprint. If you live in the US or Canada, the test for your area is easily accessible. If you live in the Belize unfortunately Belize is not identified on the GFN Calculator, but it is interesting to use Columbia (which is identified) to assess your footprint. Individual-specific questions are asked about type of diet, local food, waste/recycling habits, electricity usage, type of house, personal transportation, public transportation, and airplane travel. For each topic, you have the option to give a quick, cruder, response or to use the Calculator to give a more detailed evaluation. In the end, your responses to these lifestyle questions are combined with your nation’s societal burden from services such as health care or military operations. The Calculator presents the final output as the number of Earths that would be needed if everyone in the world lived like you – all 7.3 billion of us.

For this post I decided to calculate my own footprint using the statistics for Columbia to substitute for the lack of information in the Footprint Calculator for Belize. The only real difference probably is that Columbia supports a military and Belize does not. A general description of life in Belize for me: I currently live with my wife in a bungalow on the beach. Since this is coastal Belize we rarely use AC and don’t even have a furnace. Driving is usually limited to once or twice a week and typically occurs with one other person in the car. We usually have fresh local foods (e.g., fruits and vegetables, meats, dairy, water, etc.) delivered to the village we live in once a week and only travel to the grocery store for the few packaged goods we enjoy. We obtain the majority of our household water from rainfall collected off the roof of our home. We live in a fishing village so fresh fish is always available. I have a tremendous weak spot for good beef and cheese. This definitely raises my demand on the Earth as far as the Footprint Calculator is concerned.

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