Calculate your ecological footprint

1. Students can calculate and reflect on their ecological footprint.
2. Students identify strategies to reduce their footprint and communicate one action by designing a social media post.

Lead-in/ warmer ideas (15 mins)

How many Earths does your lifestyle require? Invite students to calculate their ecological footprint.

• Share the Global Foodprint Network’s online calculator with students in your class space or via a QR code on screen.
• Give students around 5 minutes to calculate and read their results.
• Students discuss their results in small groups: Were they surprised about the results? What is their first reaction to the information? What does it make them think, feel, see?

Main activities (30-45 mins)

Students identify strategies to reduce their personal impact and develop a communications strategy for social media to promote the action that most appeals to them.

Prompts:

1. Think about the consumption categories shown in your ecological footprint results. What are you already doing to address your environmental impact?
2. Research online tips that provide guidance on reducing your impact. Choose a specific action to adopt or behaviour to change.
3. Individually or in small groups, design a social media post that encourages others to join the initiative. Have some fun with this: add some humour or some colour and a catchy hashtag. Your goal is to create content that could go viral, spreading awareness about sustainable practices.

Finishing up (5-10 mins)

In an online forum, students share a link to their post or a screenshot if the post has not gone live. You could do this via a Canvas discussion board, Teams chat or other collaborative spaces like Padlet. 

Encourage students to engage with their peers’ work and like and comment what they see. 

You can copy or adapt these words to explain more in your class or online space:

• Did you know that right now, people are using natural resources as if we had 1.75 Earths? This means that by August each year, we use up all the resources the planet can renew for that year. After that, we’re basically borrowing from the Earth and the generations that come after us without any intention to pay this back.
• Industrialised societies consume more than others and contribute far more to the degradation of the biosphere. If you are living in an advanced economy, your ecological footprint is probably quite significant. Let’s see how big it is!

You may find the following tools and resources useful:

• Run remote/ asynchronous discussions via a Canvas discussion board, Teams chat or other collaborative spaces like Padlet and google docs
• Mentimeter for polls – especially where answers are better shared anonymously
• Ecological Footprint Calculator: https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en

You can use this at any point during your subject or course. If you decide to use it early in the course, you can refer back to this concept throughout the subject. 

The activities above would also work with:

• Small or large class cohorts
• In-person, blended and online learning
• Classes with international student cohorts
• Social Sciences, Business, Design, Architecture and Building, Engineering and subjects where students consider the impact of their discipline and profession on society

• Change the way you live | WWF Tips to reduce your ecological footprint
• Critics of ‘degrowth’ economics say it’s unworkable – but from an ecologist’s perspective, it’s inevitable | The Conversation article
• What YOU can do about climate change | Our Changing Climate video