EAS510 Homework 1
Huang Hua
A. Calculate your ecological footprint (EF), and indicate how many planets would be needed if all humans on earth had your footprint.

Answer: My ecological footprint is 30.40gha. If everyone one the planet live my lifestyle, we will need 1.93 Earths.

Figure 1. Ecological Footprint calculated with www.myfootprint.org. B. Describe the principles and assumptions used in the metho.
Answer: The Ecological Footprint Quiz estimates the area of land and ocean required to support our consumption of food, goods, services, housing, and energy and assimilate our wastes. The ecological footprint is expressed in "global hectares" (gha) or "global acres" (ga), which are standardized units that take into account the differences in biological productivity of various ecosystems impacted by our consumption activities.
Our footprint is broken down into four consumption categories: carbon (home energy use and transportation), food, housing, and goods and services. Our footprint is also broken down into four ecosystem types or biomes: cropland, pastureland, forestland, and marine fisheries.
My life style currently is: a family of three living in a family house of around 200 square meter, own a car, healthy food diet, and once per year family trip. C. Explain quantitatively the relative impact of each of the input items on the footprint. Figure 2 Composition of my Ecological Footprint and it’s comparison with the country’s average (note that the country used here was China)

Answer: Refer to Figure 2, we can see that a very large part of my Ecological Footprint is from the Carbon Footprint session, 15.40/30.40 – responsible for more than 50% of my Ecological Footprint indeed. This large amount of Carbon Footprint is due to my significant amount of travel by flight per year – up to 20000 miles per year. Food Footprint and Housing Footprint only contribute a small amount to my Ecological Footprint – 16% and 7% respectively. The last input item – Goods and Services Footprint contribute 27% to my Ecological Footprint, largely because of my habit of dispose items before they reach their ends of life.

D. describe methods by which you could make the maximal reduction in the footprint that would not affect your work or life in an intolerable way, and indicate that reduction in %
Answer:

Figure 3. Composition of my Ecological Footprint after I make the maximal reduction and its comparison with the country’s average Ecological Footprint (note that the country used here was China).
In order to bring down my Carbon Footprint, I can:
1. Use cleaner transport
As indicated in C, a very large part of my Ecological Footprint comes from my Carbon Footprint, and it is mostly contributed by my excessive amount of travel by flight (20000 miles/year) and by personal vehicle (10000 miles/ year), and most of the airplane trips is inevitable (we had family trips at least once a year). Therefore, to reduce the Carbon Footprint, I can:
a. use less personal vehicle and walk or take public transit whenever possible
b. purchase offsets for carbon emission associate with transportation, such as Sustainable Travel.
2. Add energy-saving features to home
I would consider our house is considered quite energy saving in the China environment, but there’s still some more we could do to help reduce Carbon Footprint further:
a. install solar panels
b. install insulating blinds for our house
With the above actions, my Carbon Footprint is brought down to 6.11 gha, which is 60% less than the previous Carbon Footprint, and 31% reduction from the previous total Ecological Footprint.
Regarding the Food Footprint, I don’t think there’s much I could do to reduce it further, it’s not likely I could change my diet to totally vegetarian, and I am already eating only one large meal only per day, and I am cooking as much as possible on my own, getting as much as I can from the farmer’s market.
Neither could I make much reduction on the Housing Footprint. It’s not likely I should bring down my family house and build it all again with sustainable material just for reducing my Ecological Footprint.
In order to bring down my Goods and Services Footprint, I can:
1. spend less, start good habits of saving money
2. replace items only when I really need to
3. compost food waste for the garden
With the above actions, my Goods and Services Footprint is brought down to 5.42 gha, which is 34% less than the previous Goods and Services Footprint, and 9% reduction from the previous total Ecological Footprint.
In total, I am able to have an Ecological Footprint of 18.30 gha, which is 40% reduction from the previous Ecological Footprint. E. Estimate your EF once you finish school and start your career (or if you already started your career then consider a next period of major life change, such as marriage, having a child, and such) and indicate ways by which you may be able to reduce it while still maintaining the kind of lifestyle you expect to have.
Answer: the kind of lifestyle I expect to have once I finish school and start my career is: renting an apartment with a few friends, healthy diet, business trip plus once per year annual trip. Figure 4. My Expected Ecological Footprint after I graduate from school and start my career and its comparison with the country’s average (note that the country used for reference here is Singapore – there’s no Singapore on the map so I used Malaysia instead).
My expected Ecological Footprint would be 29.44 gha after I graduate from school and start my career.
Possible ways that I might be able to reduce the Ecological Footprint would be:
1. purchase offsets for carbon emission associate with transportation, such as Sustainable Travel
2. less eat-out, and more cook on my own
3. use more public transportation, or walking
4. replace items only if I really need to

F. What would you have to do to reduce your EF to 4.5 biologically productive acres while staying in the U.S., and explain in some detail whether you would be able to do so and continue a reasonable lifestyle?
Answer: Given that 6.4 billion humans are sharing all the biologically productive land on this earth, each person has 4.5 acres as their personal planetoid – this is how the number of 4.5 biologically productive acres comes from. Currently United States has a national average EF of 24 biologically productive acres per person, much higher than the required 4.5 biologically productive acres.
To determine whether we are able to reduce EF to 4.5 biologically productive acres while we are staying in U.S., first I would determine what’s the EF we need to achieve in global hectare (gha), then I would take the quiz by myfootprint.org choosing the most sustainable and reasonable lifestyle.
To convert between biologically productive acres and global hectare, let’s look at an example:
EF in China: 4 biologically productive acres = 17.5 global hectare
=> 1 biologically productive acres = 4.375 gha => 4.5 biologically productive acres = 19.7 gha
We assume a typical family of three living in a rent apartment, with mid-class income, not flying to anywhere for holiday, only road trip, with 10000 miles/ year on family mid-size vehicle, and 2000 miles/ year on bus, 2000 miles/ year on subway, good energy-saving habits. And this is the EF we get for a person living in a family like that in the U.S., 37.41 gha >> 19.7gha!!! Figure 5. Personal Footprint in Global Hectares for someone living in an energy-saving family in the U.S. and its comparison to the country’s average EF.
Therefore we could reasonably argue that it is not possible to reduce one’s EF to 4.5 biological productive acres and continues a reasonable lifestyle while we are living in the U.S. This is also because U.S. is one of the largest energy-consuming countries in the world; therefore its residents share more EF even if they are living an energy-saving lifestyle.
Even so, U.S. residents should still try to reduce their EF as much as possible by:
1. Use cleaner transport
2. Add energy-saving features to their home
3. Adopt energy-saving habits
4. Eat more local, in-season foods, and eat lower on the food chain
5. Choose sustainable building materials, furnishings, and cleaning products
6. Adopt water-saving habits
7. Recycle