Students from around the world calculated their class mean and standard deviations for their footprints and posted them on our world map.
Do you see differences across the globe? If so, why do you think those differences exist?
Did you use the calculator to try to reduce your footprint down to the average from a citizen of another country? What changes would you have to make to lower your footprint in this way? Are you going to try and take some of these actions in your daily life?
Student Footprints >
Elizabeth U (USA)
My name is Elizabeth and I am from the United States. I live in Mooresville, North Carolina and am 17 years old. My total footprint is 32,241 which is almost double my region at 15,918. The reason for my high footprint is my transportation. I take four international flights every year for mission trips so the airplanes really set me back. Also, I am a dancer and have to drive an hour each day after school for dance. Although I carpool with other girls, we are still using a lot of gas to get to and from the gym every day. My transportation footprint is 23,500 with my region being just over 4,000. Although I have a high transportation footprint, my family tries really hard to be energy efficient and my other footprints (home, food and purchases) are significantly lower than that of my region. I wasn’t surprised to see my overall footprint through the roof because of travels, but I was surprised to see how high my region is in the home, food and purchases categories. I feel like very few people are aware of their carbon footprints and don’t do anything to preserve the envir onment. In the future, I plan on purchasing a more energy efficient car to preserve my transportation however I will still continue to take International Mission Trips to help those in other countries as well as my own.