Quiz - How green are you?

[Tinker]

Check your ecological footprint

If everyone lived like me we'd need 1.7 planets. And it's only so low because I'm on mat leave and walk everywhere atm.

[HRHQoQ]

footprint of 2.2 - but I guessed my house size

[bobbybob]

Also it only had 3 weather places and none of them remotely similar to where I live.

[merglemergle]

1.3 planets.

Food is my big planet killer at 0.7. I am basically vegan (occasional dairy), eat virtually no processed/packaged food and virutally all my food is locally grown. And it would STILL take 0.7 planets to meet my food needs! Makes you think, huh?

[merglemergle]

prisoner-I got it down to 0.7 of a planet by being super virtuous (there were 7 of us in my green design, no electricity, commune)

[NotQuiteCockney]

QV, I think living in a big city is more environmental, actually. All your goods and so on don't have to be shipped as far.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Hmmm, I did the whole quiz the same, only with me living in a small town, and came up with 2.2 planets, the same as I did with London.

It's flying that does me in. Oh, and eating (some) meat.

By the way, the reason meat takes more space is simple. If we ate vegan, we'd only need, say 1kg of grown food per day. But to make 1kg of meat, it takes 10kg of grown food. (1kg of milk is something in the middle, say 5kg of grown food.)

[freakyzebra]

NQC/QV -- yeah, but we live where we do (in a small town) so that DH doesn't have to commute! And being a small town it's easy (& relatively safer) to get everywhere on bikes. So am not sure about the logic of that.

It's obviously a quite simplistic quiz... we grow some of our own food, but didn't get to put that in. We waste very little food (some people waste big quantities). I used to be a vegetarian for these types of env. reasons (Diet for a Small Planet, and all that), but meat production is (or can be) entirely environmentally sustainable within the UK; it depends which country you live in how unsustainable it is; in fact, it depends what kind of animal flesh you eat, too. The global warming emissions & energy used for production associated with chickens are much lower than that for pork which is lower than beef, etc.

[freakyzebra]

Incidentally, on the growing your own food thing, it's very hard around here to get your own allotment (or so I'm told).

Something like 30% of the world's food is produced/grown in urban environments, btw.