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 >
Madison (Mooresville, NC)
Hello, My name is Madison. I was born and raised in Mooresville, North Carolina, USA ,where I still live. I am 16 and a junior in high school. My average carbon footprint came out to be 20,622 kg. Compared to other schools around the United States, my total footprint seemed to fit in with the average. My transportation was pretty high, at 11,655 kg. This is probably because I live right on the outskirts of the boundaries for my school district. Also, I have to travel back to the school every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday due to marching band, as well as other times for other various clubs. Also, most of my friends live near the school, and we often gather on that side of town, so I have to do a lot of driving, letting out a lot of gas emissions into the atmosphere. All my other values were either relatively low or right in the average. Overall I wasn’t super surprised that countries outside of the United States were lower than ours. The United States tends to use more of the world’s resources and give off more dangerous chemicals. I was just surprised a bit at just how high the US’s footprint was. In the future, I hope that we can eliminate some of that. I think a big step would probably be to walk everywhere or carpool or just not use so much individual transportation.