Ecological Footprint Calculation 3/31/09

So today I calculated my Ecological Footprint.... I have always thought of myself as quite environmentally conscience. I shop at the Co-Op, I recycle and compost and much as I can, I buy organic products, I walk to school and yet after calculating my foot print I found out that if everyone lived like me there would need to be 3.2 planets... 3.2 PLANETS!!!

Wow, and most of my consumption is in services (54%) that cause the most environmental carbon impact. SO I probably need to rethink some things over... What am I doing wrong?

A couple small things I know I can do, but I just need to remember is always taking my own bag to the grocery store. I have about three of them, but when I go to the grocery store it's always on a whim... Maybe by keeping one in my car at all times will solve this problem, or just a little planning.

Another thing I can do is just remembering to bring my water bottle and/or coffee mug to school to cut down garbage. I have tons of these laying around my house I just need to remember to take them to school. I can also just make my own coffee at home so that I can control what coffee to dink, such as Fair-Trad and organically grown option. I mean do I really know for sure if the coffee I'm buying on campus even pays their workers a decent wage... Nope.

I also going to pledge to purchase products that use less packaging or are made out of 100% post-consumer content material. I've already slowly started to adapt this concept. It's really easy to shop at the Co-op to do this since they have a huge bulk foods section. I can even bring in my own containers and fill up on shampoo/conditioner, laundry detergent, soap, peanut butter, olive oil, spices, and tons of other things. I wouldn't be buying and added packaging which would makes the cost of the product go down, and in this dismal economy this is a great option for everybody.

So these are the main actions I'm going to commit to work on to reduce my weekly carbon footprint during this quarter, and after I accomplish these goals I will make an effort to work on three more!