Ecological Footprint

Take the Ecological Footprint (EF) test to get informed about your real impact on Planet Earth

Scientists have calculated that mankind is currently using about half the total Ecological Footprint (EF), or bio-productivity, of the planet.

This is resulting in massive problems - from the extinction of species to the erosions of topsoil, from deteriorating water supplies to traffic jams, from shrinking fish stocks to global warming.

At the same time, the planet's ecosystems cannot absorb all of the waste generated by the manufacture and distribution of our goods and services.

For example, every year mankind is creating 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide above the total that can be absorbed by the bio-productivity of the planet, raising the level of this 'greenhouse gas' in the atmosphere. The result is global warming.

Would you like to measure your own Ecological Footprint (EF)?

By doing so, you will become informed about the true impacts of your lifestyle and be able to see which areas you score badly in. You will also see the relative impacts your actions can make: for example, the difference between fitting a low energy light bulb and minimising your air travel.

It's fairly easy to measure the EF of a whole country but not so easy for individuals, so we can only give you an approximate personal measure. However, researchers have found that an approximate assessment can be made from looking at five key areas:

• Food
• Electricity
• Housing
• Transport
• Air Travel

From the following displays, choose the 'profiles' that most closely reflect your use of each of the topics.

Add the first four scores together, then double to account for other aspects of your resource use, including your share of public services. Then add the Air Travel score.

Then divide your score by 100 to get the figure in ‘average global hectares.’

Food:

You grow most of your own food, with small purchases of 'essentials' and eat a mainly vegetarian diet... 20

You grow some of your own food, buy locally otherwise, eat modest amounts of animal products... 45

You grow little of your own food but purchase wisely and eat out only occasionally... 90

All your food comes from a supermarket or delicatessen, with uncritical choices. You eat out at least once per week... 200

Electricity:

You are not connected to mains electricity, lighting by oil lamp, cooking by wood... 5

You have a very modest use of power with careful choice of appliances and a good switch-off policy... 20

A typically middle-class house but without air conditioning or electric heating... 50

Heavy use, including electric heating and electric stove 100

Housing:

Tiny dwelling with compost pit toilet... 10

Small house with 2/3 rooms, flush toilet... 30

About 5 rooms, including well-appointed bathroom... 80

About 10 rooms including 2/3 bathrooms... 200

Transport:

You travel very little and then by public transport... 10

Mostly use public transport but have occasional use of car, usually with others sharing it -say 50 miles/week... 40

Modest use of car, with others - say 150 miles/week 100

Most of your travelling is by car, usually with you as the only occupant - say 250 miles/week or more... 200

Air Travel:

You never travel by air... 0

You fly 1 - 10 hours per year... 120

You fly 11 - 20 hours per year... 350

You fly over 21 hours per year... 800

Final Score:

About 2.00 average global hectares are available to each 6.1 billion of us.

If your score is 2.00 or less, you are living within your share of Footprint.

If it's between 2.00 and 4.00, then we'd need another planet if everyone lived like you, and so on...

Up to 2.00 One Earth can sustain your lifestyle...

2.00 to 4.00 Another Earth is needed...

4.00 to 6.00 Two more Earths...

6.00 or more At least three more Earths are needed if everyone shared this lifestyle....

www.thewebofhope.org

Carbon Calculator

Direct Household Energy Use

Most of the energy used in UK houses is gas and electricity. In each case, this will be indicated in your utility bill in terms of kilowatt hours (kWh).

To calculate your carbon dioxide emissions, multiply your annual consumption of electricity by a ‘kilogram co-efficient’ of 0.45, your annual gas consumption by 0.19 and heating oil by 2.975.

Then divide each total by the number of people in the household to reveal your individual emissions.

Travel Use

First, estimate the annual distance you travel by each mode of transport, discounting car journeys as a passenger. Then multiply each annual total with the appropriate ‘kilogram co-efficient’ below.

Petrol car (as driver) x 0.2
Diesel car (as driver) x 0.14

Rail (Intercity) x 0.11
Rail (other services) x 0.16
Rail (underground) x 0.07

Bus (London) x 0.09
Bus (outside London) x 0.17
Express Coach x 0.08

Chemical Dependence

7-ways to reduce your chemical dependence and improve your health

• Scrutinize the list of chemicals in the decorating, cleaning and cosmetic products you have at home, most of which can be linked to modern ailments, from cancers to skin disorders and asthma, and replace with natural alternatives.
• Buy some bicarbonate of soda, for dissolving dirt, grease and carpet stains and neutralizing strong "after-party" smells.
• Buy cheap malt or white wine vinegar and use with warm water for wiping down surfaces and cleaning floors.
• Use natural alternatives to pesticides in your garden.
• Stop using bleach containing ammonia, which react to form chloramines, a noxious and debilitating gas.
• Any nasty chemicals that you refuse to throw away, store safely somewhere outside, not under the kitchen sink.
• Open the windows more often and allow accumulated toxins to be released to the four winds rather than gathering in your body.

Water as Resource

Water Facts

• Turning off the tap while brushing your teeth can save 5 to 10 litres of water each time
• Using the basin while washing face and hands can save 8 to 15 litres each time
• Filling a mug and turning off the tap while shaving can save 10 to 15 litres each time
• Rnsing, then turning off the tap, using soap, then rinsing again when taking a shower, can save up to 70 litres.

Harvesting Rainwater

Catchment area x runoff factor x rainfall = quantity of water

If a roof is 20 m long and 10 m wide and the rainfall is 1000mm, the water available for harvesting is:

20 x 10 x 1000 = 200,000 litres

Biodiversity

1. Bringing Back the Birds - tips from Monty Don
    
2. • Don’t cut seed-bearing plants back until Spring
   • Put up nesting boxes and bird tables
   • Keep an area of long grass
   • Provide fresh-water
   • Plant native species and lots of berries, especially hawthorn
   • Plant hedges but do not cut during nesting season (Feb-Sept)
   • Never use insecticides
      
3. Adopt a vegetable. With a donation of £10 to the Henry Doubleday Research Association’s (HDRA’s) ‘Adopt a Veg’ scheme, you can help pay for their Heritage Seed Library’s (HSL’s) handling, storage and propagation of vanishing varieties. If you become a member, you can choose six seed packets a year from the HSL seed-bank to grow yourself. www.hdra.org.uk
    
4. Plant trees, plants and seeds, wherever and whenever you can, whether it be a window box, your garden or patches of exposed soil down your street. You will be helping to preserve biodiversity, sequester carbon and cheer up your neighbours.

 

Composting

Waste = Food... The Composting Process - Heater and Chompers

Composting is a natural two stage process which converts organic waste into a valuable material for the garden.

In the first stage, bacteria and fungi - the heaters - utilise the softer waste as a source of food. A properly constructed heap should generate heat and reach 60 degrees - about the temperature of a hot cup of tea. It should not smell unpleasant.

• For a good compost heap you require:
• A soft green material to provide nitrogen
• A good supply of air
• Some moisture
• Tougher material to keep the structure open

The heap will eventually cool down after 4 - 6 weeks and at this point chompers take over the composting process by consuming the tougher material. The chompers are larger invertebrates, such as worms, centipedes, beetles and woodlice. The end result is dark, rich, fibrous compost - that costs you nothing.

Step 1. How to make a composter

Here are 3 possible ways of many:

1. Convert an old plastic rubbish bin into a composter by drilling about four rows of holes 4 to 6 inches apart all around the sides and cutting off the base for drainage.
2. Make a wire mesh bin by using 12 feet by 3 feet galvanized chicken wire or hardware cloth.
3. Build a wooden bin from 4 used wood pallets or other scrap wood.

Step 2: How to compost

1. Put your composter in the garden on bare soil, not paving or decking. It should be somewhere that is easy to get to all year round. Composters can be got from local authorities or garden centres. Alternatively they can be built yourself [see Step 1: Make a Composter]
2. Composting needs a balanced diet – just like us! Try to add equal volumes of green (soft) and brown (tough) materials. Soft, wet materials include grass cuttings, tea bags and uncooked vegetable peelings that won’t successfully compost on their own. Tough items are harder, drier materials such as straw, paper and hedge cuttings.
3. Composting works best if you add lots of materials at once. Chop chunky and large items into small pieces to speed up the composting process. Try to ensure that your compost stays moist but not wet – when squeezed in your hand a few drops of water should be produced. Add water if it is too dry; cover and add dry material if too wet.
4. Add soil, finished compost or a compost accelerator (young nettles are excellent at this job) to help speed up the composting process.
5. Remember to keep adding a good mixture of materials. Agitate the contents with a garden fork to keep the air flowing through the material. Do this every couple of weeks during the summer and every month or so in the winter.
6. Your compost is ready when it is dark in colour and has an earthy smell. Depending on the time of year and materials used this can take anything from six to eighteen months. The finished compost will appear at the bottom of the heap.

Step 3: Using the compost, tips and problem solving

• The compost can be used in the garden as a soil conditioner or mix it with sharp sand and soil to make a potting mix.
• If your compost is ‘chunky’, simply spread it over your garden beds as mulch.
• Always mix soft green wastes and tougher material
• Add large amounts of materials in one go - the bigger the heap the better it will heat up
• Turn your heap regularly, at least once a month, to maintain a good supply of air
• Leave the heap for 6 - 12 months after it has cooled down to allow the chompers to do their work
• Only put compostable material on your heap
• Don't give up if it does not work first time
• Use your compost for making potting compost, mulching weeds and improving your soil

Starting a Food Group

There are plenty of legitimate excuses for not being able to boycott supermarkets and rely purely on farmers markets and organic box schemes. The area in which you live, for example, may simply not be serviced by such enterprises and, even if they are, supermarkets still provide products which you cannot find easily elsewhere.

One way of overcoming this is through starting or joining a local food-buying group. The basic idea of a Food Group is that, by pooling together with neighbours and others within the community, the group is able to make bulk purchases through wholesalers. Ideally, order from one of the wholesalers listed in this toolkit, since they all sell certified organic goods, along with other ecological household products, like washing powders and detergents.

A recent study conducted by The Ecologist magazine compared the costs of one wholesaler with Tesco’s on-line store over a range of ten basic products and found the wholesaler’s price 29% cheaper than the supermarket. Not only will you be saving nearly a third of your average spend, you will also be saving the planet by cutting down on ‘food miles’, processing, packaging and, as a result, on CO2 emissions.

It makes sense - economically and ecologically.

How to Start a Food Group:

1. The group will need to meet the minimum order limit from the wholesaler each time and on a regular basis, so needs to demonstrate that it is efficiently run and organised. Chose a wholesaler from the list below and open a dialogue with them: what is the minimum order; where and when do they deliver; how do you make payment?
    
2. Having established the requirements, try and recruit the requisite number to your group to meet the minimum order on a regular basis. Maybe outline your plans and the requirements on a small leaflet and distribute through your block of flats, your street, your village, your neighbours? Or circulate an e-mail amongst those you know locally who are like-minded and most likely to subscribe?
    
3. Liaise between yourselves and with the wholesaler to establish a convenient and accessible location for delivery. Obviously, whoever’s house / flat / office is chosen must have the space to take delivery and then to divide bulk orders into appropriate containers. Ideally, each member of the group will invest in reusable storage containers to facilitate this process.
    
4. Another primary role in the Group is collating and submitting the order. This can of course be rotated. Orders will generally be placed monthly, or bi-monthly, so chose a deadline date for each member to place their order. This might conveniently be done by group e-mail, so that each member of the group can see who is ordering what, and thus offer to go halves on a bulk product which is too much for one person or family.
    
5. Likewise, the summary breakdown of costs can be circulated electronically, and each member of the Group pay directly into one centralised bank account to make things easy. Alternatively, agree to meet once a month, down the pub, in the park, or at someone’s house, where this can all be sorted out over a drink or a meal - which has bit more of a community ring to it!
    
6. If your group works well and expands, why not think about starting a formally structured food-buying co-operative? You can access a food-buying co-operative model through UK Cooperatives, a nationwide umbrella group for co-op enterprises - www.co-opunion.coop/live/welcome.asp - or ring their legal team on 0161 246 2900. Bear in mind that formally trading co-ops like this, running on minimal profits, can be a very effective way of bringing healthy food and good nutrition to socially deprived areas.
    

Recommended Wholesalers:

Goodness Wholefoods - 01327 706611 - Northants
www.goodness.co.uk
Nationwide delivery and min order £200-350, depending on area.

Suma - 0845 458 2290 - West Yorks
www.suma.co.uk
Nationwide delivery and min order £200

Essential Trading - 01179 583550 - Bristol
www.essential-trading.co.uk
Nationwide delivery and min order £200

Infinity Foods - 01273 424060 - East Sussex
www.infinityfoods.co.uk
South-east delivery and min order £350

Green City Wholefoods - 0141 5547 633 - Glasgow
www.greencity.co.uk
Scotland delivery and min order £150-200. (Groups must register as food co-ops and Green City has a food co-op policy to regulate this.)

Lembas Wholefoods - 0845 458 1585 - Sheffield
www.lembas.co.uk
North and Midlands delivery and min order £200

Rainbow Wholefoods - 01603 630 484 - Norwich
www.rainbowwholefoods.co.uk
East Anglia delivery and min order £150

www.theecologist.co.uk

Sprouting Machine

Tim Yeoman’s Lifetime Lazy Sprouting Machine

This simple contraption yields eight square feet of perfect sprouts (sunflower, mung bean, lentil, chickpea, alfalfa etc) every week, totally automatically, needs almost no maintenance and should last a lifetime.

An open-fronted stack of shelves, made from 2 x 1 inch strips of wooden ‘baton’, holds a stack of eight perforated plastic seed trays, each filled with kitchen paper and covered in the various beans to be sprouted. An old loo cistern sits at the bottom, containing a small submersible pump fitted with an electric timer. (This could easily be powered by a small solar panel.)

Every 12 hours, water is pumped up a strip of hose-pipe at the back and sprays through a shower hose at the top for 15 minutes. This then drips through the trays and collects in the bottom reservoir. The water only needs replacing once every week and becomes a potent organic fertiliser in the process.

This will produce more than enough sprouts for a family every week and, once replicated on a larger scale - for example, in a small garage or garden shed - can generate enough sprouts for a viable commercial business. California’s farmer’s markets, for example, are filled with thriving sprouting ventures, producing pates, spreads and other sprouted products, all generated in small spaces with minimal overheads and workload.

Self-Reliance - A Recipe for the New Millennium, by Tim Yeoman. Permanent Publications. www.permaculture.org.uk