Introduction An ecological footprint is the impact that an individual or community has on the environment as a whole. It expresses how much land is required to sustain their lifestyle and use of natural resources. The ecological footprint measures how fast we consume resources and generate waste compared to how fast nature can absorb our waste and generate new resources. There are several factors impacting the size of an ecological footprint. Some of the primary factors include food, shelter, mobility, goods, and services. Food is impacted by how many animal-based products we eat, and how much of our food is packaged, processed, or not locally grown. Shelter includes the size of your house and if you have electricity. The mobility factor is …show more content…
Food is definitely the major factor for me, resulting in 43% of my footprint breakdown. Environmental Effects I think my lifestyle is definitely having negative environmental effects overall. The amount of resources I consume outweighs the amount being regenerated. If everyone uses as much as I do, the environment would be greatly impacted, because the Earth does not have an infinite amount of resources and there is a limit to how many people it can support. My lifestyle choices like not recycling, and driving often also have negative environmental effects; these decisions effect landfill and air pollution on Earth. My shelter is one of the lowest factors impacting my ecological footprint, and the environment overall. When in college, I live in a small apartment that I share with three people. The smaller housing option benefits our environment because it takes up less land space which needs to be used as land to grow resources instead. Another one of my lifestyle factors that is beneficial is my transportation habits. When I am living in Iowa City, I rarely use my car and walk almost everywhere. This is beneficial because walking does not take resources or contribute to air