Eco-Footprinting in the Primary School

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 land (including food producing sea) and represents the amount of space needed by that person, school etc. to live their current lifestyle.

Our Equal Share If we shared the productive land of the Earth equally between everyone who lives on the planet, we would each have around 2.2 global hectares. (Reference: Cardiff Council Sustainable Development Unit) This is land roughly twice the size of the Millennium Stadium for each of us.

Over to you… But do you think that everyone has an equal share? Do people all over the world each use the same amount of resources and so have the same ‘footprint’? If you don’t think so, which country’s citizens do you think will have the greatest impact, and why? What do you think the average Welsh footprint would be?

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 equal Earth share is 2.2 global hectares (gha) per person… Were you right in your predictions? Are you surprised?

So how does Eco-Footprinting fit into the Primary School? The aims of Eco-Footprinting are: –to make our impact on the Earth easier to understand (for example, if we all lived like we live in the Western world, we’d need nearly three planet Earths to sustain us in our current lifestyle…) (reference: Cardiff Council Sustainable Development Unit) ; and –to give a baseline against which environmentally aware lifestyle changes can be measured. Eco-Footprinting is therefore a great way of helping to deliver Education for Sustainable Development - helping children to see that they can make a difference to the world around them and actually measure what difference their efforts has made.

Sounds good, but we don’t have any spare time in the week… Cardiff is currently piloting a project based on children calculating their school’s Eco-Footprint and using this as a means of measuring improved environmental performance year on year. A series of Personal and Social Education sessions have been developed to accompany this project and add to the Education for Sustainable Development offering of schools. These sessions link clearly with the community, moral and environmental aspects of the Personal and Social Education Framework, Key Stages 1 to 4 in Wales (ACCAC, 2000), subjects within the National Curriculum for Wales (ACCAC, 2000) and the EcoSchools Programme. So you don’t need more time, this work will meet current objectives within your PSE time and link with the curriculum…

The Cardiff Ecological Footprinting Project The Cardiff pilot project aims to give pupils the tools to (a)gather data about the various aspects of lifestyle that have a big environmental impact and (b)To input the data into an ecological footprint calculator and thereby produce a measure of environmental impact. The Cardiff pilot project has done most of it work using a calculator developed by WWF Scotland. However this version of the project is designed to fit in with Field Studies Council in Wales data gathering tools and a calculator that can be found at efseurope.co.uk/toes

The efseurope calculator works on the weight of food consumed. Pupils will need access to some portable lightweight kitchen scales and the weight of a typical dinner plate at school. It would also help to know the average weight of some common choices e.g. an apple a banana a sandwich People eat at different times of day, having both snacks and meals. If the snacks are pre-packed there will be a weight printed on the packaging. Ecological–Footprinting in Practice

There are also questions about organic and local food. Organic means produced without pesticides and artificial fertilizers. Local means food which is produced not just bought within about 100 miles. These foods have a smaller ecological footprint. Pupils will need to ask if the snack or meal has anything which is organic in it or locally produced and then make an estimate of how much it weighs. They do not have to try and measure it separately. The pupils have to competed a form for each person they ask to help - see the next slide.

Online calculators… There are a number of online questionnaires that allow you to calculate your personal footprint. These are simpler than the processes described in the previous slides so you may wonder why you should go into this amount of detail. The online calculators are a great starting point for getting people to think about their impact and can be worked through quickly to obtain a rough eco-footprint.

The Benefit of the Cardiff Pilot Project The Cardiff pilot project enabling your school to input real data collected in school to calculate a more accurate eco- footprint for your school. It enables you to repeating the process year on year so you can measure actual changes to the school’s footprint as a result of the environmental improvements you made. It meets a number of important learning and curriculum requirements. Finally…

Remember Act locally Impact globally!