Personal Journal #2 - Personal Reflection on Ecological Footprint and other things

My ecological footprint is equal to 4.93 Earths. The first thought in receiving my results was how this website is calculating this and is it actually true? I find it more on the difficult side to believe this because I thought myself to be very conscientious of my actions. I recycle everything, turn off the lights when I am not in the room, shower fairly quickly, eat natural products for the most part and rarely do things like wash my car.

The concept that had never entered my mind was that there is so much more one can do to decrease his or her impact on Earth. Tomorrow I am looking into constructing a compost pile in my back yard to help matters for instance.

The problem I have come to find is that this could attract wild animals that could possibly harm my cats and dog since they spend most of their day out in the yard (where the compost would be).

I had started by first telling my parents that I will be doing so. They were against it at first. I then proceeded to annoy them about other things they were doing that was not environmentally friendly such as not sucking out the tail in the shrimp we had for dinner to furthermore devalue our mother nature. “There are staring kids in Kenya,” I had told them.

Soon enough they budged to allow me to take up a section of the back yard as long as the compost is in a container to not attract such wildlife. It is also my responsibility to take out the recycling to the street since I am looking for things to do … haha.

All in all, I accept the challenge to reduce my carbon footprint. I wonder though, why is it so difficult to take extra energy, from everyone, to go that little step further? It is like saying you do not care if the future veins of the current youth live to see tomorrow.