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 >
Plastic issues
In the last few decades, humanity has produced a large amount of plastic. The researches have shown that each year we produce almost 10% more plastic than the previous year. That is really disturbing if you consider that we already have 2.5 billion metric tons of plastic in our oceans. That plastic is severely hurting ocean wildlife, especially endemic species who live only in that particular part of the ocean. And the question appears: what can we do to help?
We can start recycling. If we recycle our disposable plastic, the less of it will end up in ocean and the less of new plastic will be produced. Unfortunately, I don’t see any other ways how we, “the small people”, could help.