Reducing Our Ecological Footprint

by Chris Savage
November 23, 2006

At least once a year, my wife and I (and the kids, too, when they were with us) would load up our backpacks and hike out into the backcountry for several days of camping. It's not the easiest way to camp, for sure, but there are so many benefits that it's an important part of my life. It re-energizes me, sort of a life "reboot", and slows me down from the frenetic pace of life I live in the rest of the year. But perhaps the biggest benefit that I get from it is that it reminds me just how much of the "stuff" I have is "stuff" I want and how much is is "stuff" I need.

When you carry all of the things you need for three or four (or more!) days in the wilderness, it forces you to give serious thought to what you bring. You only have so much space to put things in a backpack and nobody wants to haul around a 95-pound pack all day long, particularly if you're heading into the mountains. So, you bring the food you need. You bring water and the means to purify water. You bring just the clothes you'll need. And a tent and sleeping bag and sleeping pad to keep you warm and dry. And a stove to cook on. And a pan to cook in. And a mug to drink out of and spoons and forks and bowls to eat with. Finally, you need matches and a few toiletries and a first aid kit. Once you have those things, everything else is extra.

For example, I bring a plastic funnel for making good coffee. I don't need coffee but, on the other hand, I NEED coffee! I also bring a book or a magazine to peruse. I don't need it but it's small and it's worth the extra weight. We usually bring a hip flask of scotch, another concession we're willing to carry. These are simple things that give us pleasure.

At the end of the trip, we bring out a ziploc bag or two of trash and that's about it (other than some pretty stinky clothes!)

During our trip, we practice the Leave No Trace principles. If you're interested, there's a Leave No Trace organization that publishes these concepts on their website. The thrust of this approach is leave the wilderness you spend time the same way you found it, if not better. Those who come behind you should not even know you were there. Even the Boy Scouts of America are now teaching these principles. It's a far cry from decades ago when a pack of young boys would enter their campsite and immediately begin transforming it. They'd chop down trees and saplings to build structures. They'd trench around their tents. They would literally create a new space to camp in, one that left a very big trace. Rather than leaving a small footprint, they leave a large boot stomp.

The reason I think I value backpacking so much is the effect that it has on me when I return. Having spent several days being careful about the impact I have on my environment, I return realizing what a large impact I have in my everyday life. You can, in fact, find out what your ecological footprint is, a way of measuring what ecological impact your lifestyle has. Got to MyFootPrint.org and you can calculate your ecological footprint. Although it's not perfect, this quiz will give you food for thought. It calculates how much land your lifestyle requires per year to sustain and how many earths we'd need if everyone on the planet lived like you. What you find may surprise you.

What can we do to reduce our ecological footprint? There are many thing. For example, in our house, we compost all organic matter. We also recycle everything that our local community accepts at the recycling center. In addition, we often choose the items we buy based on the amount of packaging they have. The combination of these three things reduces our garbage output to only one 30-gallon bag every two weeks for a family of two. Not too bad. And the compost we make goes into our organic garden plot. This compost is a rich, black material that acts like a high potency fertilizer for our garden. It's composed of food waste, papertowels & napkins, the occasional egg carton and anything that will break down including yard waste (leaves, grass clippings, etc.) When turned regularly, a compost pile will get as high as 130ƒF, enough to sterilize seeds so that they don't sprout in your garden.

We have also replaced a large number of our incandescent lightbulbs with fluorescent bulbs. The cost of these bulbs has come down to the point where they are now very cost effective and they consume much less energy. They screw into your light fixtures like a traditional bulb and last up to 13 times as long. The bulbs you can buy today are much higher quality than in the past with less flicker and with a warmer light. Because an incandescent bulb wastes as much as 90% of its energy as heat, the power consumption of the cooler-running fluorescent bulbs is much less. According to the Georgia Interfaith Power & Light company, "Each 13-watt compact fluorescent (CFL), over the expected 10,000 hour life of the bulbs, will save 470 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity as compared to 60-watt incandescent bulbs. This translates to a global warming-fighting reduction of over 730 pounds of carbon dioxide. It also means a reduction of 1.6 pounds of nitrogen oxides (which contribute to ozone and acid rain) and 4.3 pounds of sulfur dioxide (which contributes to haze and acid rain), and makes significant reductions in other impacts of coal-produced power such as mercury pollution and destruction of forest and stream habitats in mining areas." Now that's reducing your footprint!

Buying locally-grown and processed foods is another way to reduce your footprint. Although it's not so obvious, the amount of energy it takes to ship food around the globe is astronomical. Only because food can be grown so inexpensively is it not prohibitively expensive to ship it all the way from, say, South America, to the Midwest of America. By choosing local foods, you can have a large indirect impact. While you're at it, consider buying organic whenever possible. Organic produce and other foods have come down significantly in price, gone up significantly in quality and have become much more readily available. In our family, we have found that organic growers often choose varieties that don't need to be shipped as far and stored as long and, as a consequence, they taste better! Organic bananas are a good example of this.

Here is a short list of websites that have other ideas for reducing our ecological footprint:

StopGlobalWarming.org - Ideas
Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection - Choosing a vehicle
World Wildlife Federation - How you can help the environment in your daily life
Ten Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint at Work
Greening Your Office
GarbageLand - Ten Things You Can Do
CNNMoney.com article on Green Mortgages

Whatever choices we make, it is worth our while to consider our ecological footprint and to reduce that footprint whenever possible. Be an example to coworkers, friends and neighbors. And, above all, to have the biggest impact, teach your children. There is no more effective way to change the world than to teach our children how to be good stewards of it. Lead by example and show them how to live simply. What we learn as children stays with us the rest of our lives and learning to live with a smaller ecological footprint is, perhaps, the finest legacy of all.

Consider going backpacking once a year. It doesn't have to be a long or particularly strenuous trip. Just getting out with all you need to survive for a couple of days strapped to your back is enough to make you realize how complicated we make our lives sometimes. Simplifying things for a short time has a wonderful effect and it spills over into the rest of your life in subtle but important ways.

So take a hike! I'll see you in the backcountry.