What is eco-footprinting? Read on to find out more…

A footprint means pressing down, and global means the world so ‘global footprint’ means pressing down on the world and we don’t want to press too hard. This is one pupil’s definition of a global footprint or eco-footprint.

Eco-footprinting is… Eco-Footprinting is a way of measuring the impact of a person, school, city or country on the global environment; It uses real information about what people eat, how they travel, what waste they produce, how much energy they use and more; This information is converted into a measure of space - the amount of space needed by that person, school etc. to live their current lifestyle.

So really… …eco-footprinting is a clever way of working out how much of the planet you need to provide for everything you do every day, including what you eat and what you throw away.

Imagine an apple! Imagine an apple is planet Earth... Cut the apple into four quarters. Now throw three of these pieces away as these represent the oceans, which we can’t use to grow food or build on. How much of the ‘planet’ is left?

Did you work out that you had one quarter left? Well done! Slice the remaining quarter (the land) in half and throw one half away as this is land, like deserts, where people can’t live. Now how much ‘land’ is left? What is half of one quarter?

Did you work out that there’s only one eight left? Brilliant! If you slice this chunk of apple into four slices, three of them represent places on Earth where we can’t grow food because they’re too rocky, too steep or too cold. So now you have one quarter of one eighth of the ‘planet’ left…

Don’t worry, you don’t have to do the maths – just think for a moment about how little of the apple is left – or how little of the planet we can live and grow food on. Now imagine peeling the skin off the apple. That’s the earth’s crust, the only part that we use for food, building on and burying our rubbish in.

However large planet Earth may seem, the amount of natural resources we can use are limited and we’ve got to use them carefully. Now that we’re thinking about how we use the Earth, let’s find out more about our share of the planet…

Did you know? There are more than SIX BILLION people living on planet Earth That’s people we need to share the planet with…

Our Share If we shared the space equally between everyone who lives on the planet, we would have around two global hectares each. (reference: Cardiff Council Sustainable Development Unit) That’s about twice the size of the Millennium Stadium for each of us.

Over to you… But do you think that everyone only uses their fair share? Do people all over the world each use the same amount of resources and so have the same ‘footprint’?

The Real Division Eco-Footprints have been measured for countries all over the world. Here are the measurements, for Wales, Jamaica, the USA and Bangladesh. Which country do you think matches which footprint? Why?

Remember, our fair Earth share is about 2 global hectares (gha) per person… Were you right in your predictions? Are you surprised?

Wow! There’s a real difference in the impact people around the world have on the Earth isn’t there? If we all lived like we do in Wales, we’d need almost three planet Earths to support everyone. (Reference: Cardiff Council Sustainable Development Unit) Do we have three planet Earths?

You can work out your very own eco- footprint if you know: –How you travel around and how far you go –How much energy you use (for heating, cooking, lighting etc.) –How much paper you use and waste you throw away or recycle –What types of food you eat and –How much water you use Have a look at the card game – can you see all of these topics there?

The really clever part is that you don’t have to work out an eco- footprint for each person, you can look at a whole school, city or country! We’re going to look at the eco- footprint of our school this term and find out about how choices we make every day have an impact on planet Earth.

Why? We just don’t have three planet Earths. We need to look after this one better!

Remember Act locally Impact globally!