Reflection: My ecological footprint

The last post was about the Ecological footprint as a concept. In this one I will describe the results I have received when I have calculated my ecological footprint through tests made on the internet. All I did was simply google "Ecological footprint" and took the tests. Below you can see my results and also some comments regarding the questions in the test and the results. At the end there is also a short description about my input in the tests.

www.greencred.me

About the test

The test is diveded into three parts. The first one about you living conditions, what country, how big is your home, regulation of heat in your house, how much electricity you use etc. The second part is about you consumption, what you buy and what you eat. The last part is about transportation, both your daily commute and long distance travels. However you are supposed to leave the travels you do in your work out of the calculation.
You can also register and compare your result to others.
I am able to fill out information very detailed and choose my country and a city close to me. It doesn't give me any information regarding what impact this has on the result but my guess is that it has. On some questions you could fill out "my country's avarage" as a response and for those I'm assuming that they have a database filled with input.

My result

If everyone lived like me, we would need 2 planets. The diagram shows that the largest impact of my living is my food followed by my mobility.

www.footprintnetwork.org

About the test

From the start I get to choose a country/city as a base. However not all the countries in the world are available, really quite few, and the reason is that the organisation behind doesn't have the data to support calculations made in other countries. I choose Ontario, because it's in the northern hemisphere (as my home Sweden) plus the country is (as Sweden) large compared to it's population.

Throughout the test I have the option to answer more/less detailed. For example how often do I eat meat or fish as one question, or two separate questions. The questions are concerning, food, consumables and travels. The test is somewhat more "fun" since it's got pictures and more interactive regarding the answers etc, instead of answers in plain numbers it makes exampels such as a sofa or a lamp. For some this might be easier to understand, for some just plain annoying. I'm somewhere in between the two.

My result

Based on me living in Ontario If everyone lived like me we would need 2.6 planets. Food, services and mobility takes up equal parts of my footprint based on me living in Ontario. The "Services"-part I am not able to affect with my lifestyle but is based on the country/city I choose. A comment from the organisation is that this could be affected through political engagement etc.  

I re-did the test, making sure to give the same answers but with a different country (Switzerland) instead and got the result 2.3 planets. There were also new questions when I did this and some questions were stated differently, probably based on the data they have collected. Here we can see that the Food-part is really the biggest part of my footprint, probably because the service-part is in factual numbers smaller.

footprint.wwf.org.uk

About the test

This test showed up on the British site of World Wildlife Fund. It's divided into four parts; food, travel, home and stuff. The questions are quite few and easy to answer. The test is based on you living in the UK. In this test I also got to answer questions about how much money I spend on my pet, I find this interesting since many people forget that having a pet can have a large impact on your footprint.

My result

My carbon footprint is 124% of my share. I assume that this would translate into 1,24 planets even though that seems very low compared to my earlier results...

I got the result divided into percentage on the four different areas and according to this one Travel is one of the biggest contributions to my footrpint. However (in my defence?) the flight-history was to be filled out based from Uk, something that might have affected the result.

ecologicalfootprint.com

About the test

The test is very simple and short, all questions on one page. You can choose between living in UK or "Rest of the world" so I can imagine that the test is fairly blunt. However your result is shown on the page while you answer questions so you can see what difference your answers make.

My results

My results here are about the same as for the WWF-test with 1,4 planets. But there is no break down of the result.

wwf.panda.org --> myfootprint.org

About the test

I found some info regarding ecological footprint on WWF's global homepage and it directed me to the page myfootprint.org to calculate my footprint. To do this test I need to subscribe, $1 for a day, $3 for a month or $10 for a full year. I choose to only take the one day option and the payment is made via Paypal so I feel safe not being scammed. 

The test is very detailed with lots of specific questions regarding your food, transport and living. Some of the questions were difficult to answer, especially thos on housing since I live in a rented apartment and am not sure about the detailed specifications of the apartment.

My result

If everybody lived like me we would need 1.60 planets. I got a comparison between my results and my country average, here we can see that I'm lower on all parts apart from the Food footprint.

Conclusions

So what are my conclusions after making several tests? That it's very difficult to get a good understanding of what is "correct". My results are 2,0 planets, 2,6 planets, 2,3 planets, 1,24 planets, 1,40 planets and 1,6 planets. So the deviation between my best and worst result is 1,36 planets, which seem like quite a lot difference. In average my result is 1,86 planets, compared to the global average 1,6 planets (2007).
I think these tests can be an awakening for some just to see what different aspects in ones life is affecting the eearth the most. For me it was a confirmation that I need to do something about my eating habits since they seem to be one of the largest impacts. I also think for me that the tests can help me in seeing the difference on my ecological footprint after this project. So basically that if/when I do the tests again in a year it will be easy for me to see if my life is more sustainable.

Input in the tests

I live in Sweden, in a rental flat together with my fiancee. The house we live in is a low energy building with high isolation, mostly heated up by the people living in it. We don't have a dishwasher but we do have a washer and dryer, however most clothes we hang dry, not tumble. I do enjoy a bit of shopping and I go by bus to work, approximately 10km away from my home. We don't own a car but occasionally we rent one when we go on holidays. I am not a frequent flyer and I try to buy ecological goods when possible. I eat meat & fish in almost all my meals.