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 >
Fighting for a green future
Living on the country side, I thought my footprint would be lower than the majority, so I was very surprised when I got my footprint 8366 of CO2, compared to the average of 4570 from Romania. After I analyzed the data, I realized that living far from the city is the major cause of my pollution. My high school is 40 km away, so taking the bus to go there is my only option. 80 km a day, 5 days a week with a bus is massively increasing my carbon footprint. Also, the village that I live in doesn't have gas conducts, so the only cheap option to heat the rooms are stove furnaces that work with wood and emit a lot of air pollution. I'm waiting for affordable tips on how to lower those 2 biggest causes of pollution!
But until then I can't stay still and do nothing about other sources of pollution, the ones that I can manage in my everyday life. I started with little steps, like taking shorter showers, closing the tap while brushing my teeth, using the electric light only on the nighttime and so on. Ultimately, I had a talk with my family and decided to install solar panels for h ot water.
I know that continuing like this and also convincing more people to be eco-friendly will definitely make a change!