Today I signed a climate pledge and I ask you to do it as well. We both know climate is changing and that is harmful for all of us. We see more and more hurricanes, drought, starvation and all kinds of troubles, that cause human suffering and lack of nature diversity. And it’s still not sure if we really have time to stop this progress? Is it possible, or did we wake up too late? Paris Agreement is in every case an important step towards doing our best to save our globe. Still, there is much to do in everybody’s personal life. And this post tells about my own ecological choices.

My working place belongs to the WWF‘s Green Office program. At least I try to do ecological choices in my everyday life, like cycling to work (even in the winter time) or using digital materials instead printing them. I would like to insert Green Office logos to all of my learning materials to show my students that I am committed to these important values and hope to see them capturing them as well.

My Own Starting Results

So the first thing I did was doing a counter, that counts my ecological footpring. And here are my results. My ecological footprint according to this counter is 2,58 global hectares (gha) a year, which means, that if everybody lived like me, we’d need 1,25 globes to cover our living costs.

• Home 0,67 (25,8%) gha/in a year
• Traffic 0,54 (21,0%)
• Food and drinks 0,69 (26,8%)
• Products and services 0,68 (26,4%)
• Total 2,58 (100%)

In our household water is used ∼ 7,4 cubic meters a month. I always try to avoid wasting water. In our household electricity is used 182 kWh a month and warming energy is used under 5000 kWh a year. I use bus, tram and metro approximately 30 kilometers and train 10 kilometers a week, although I try to cycle almost all the trips I do. Winter time is a bit challenging season in Finland, and sometimes it’s almost impossible to cycle. I don’t drive a car, but I travel 9-10 hours a year by airplane. This is very important, because traveling is my hobby. If I didn’t fly at all, my overall result would be 2,08 global hectares a year and if everybody lived like me, we’d need only 1,01 globe to cover our living costs.

All in all, I am committed to cut my own ecological footprint, and I am already doing a lot of good things in my life. But there are still some good choices I could do for our environment. Here is a good article (in Finnish) about making effective ecological choices. So here is a challenge for you: what can you do and what are you going to do in your personal life to cut your ecological footprint?