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 >
Sustainability vs. Lifestyle
My carbon footprint ended up being pretty high at up around 20,000. Now in my house we try to live pretty sustainable whether it's composting and recycling most of our waste or turning off all the lights and using the sunlight as lighting. We also do not tend to have a ton of things plugged into the walls or always using an electronic. Where we generate most of our carbon is in our lifestyle. Me and my brother are both athletes that work extremely hard at what we want to be good at. We travel a lot driving back and forth between school, practices, training sessions, just going to the gym, and home. We also go to different tracks and weight rooms. This requires a lot of driving and while our car has decent mpg, it is not electric or has the best mileage. We also travel a lot for games. For school we took flights to Hawaii and San Diego for tournaments. AAU is not different, I have already gone to La, and some of the local tournaments are still an hour drive. This makes for a huge carbon output in the end for me.