Need help with the correct answers, missing data can assume Calculate your teams

Question

Need help with the correct answers, missing data can assume

Calculate your teams's ecological footprint using an online calculator. Assume your team is your family. What is an ecological footprint? How is one calculated? What is your family's ecological footprint? How many Earth's would it take for everyone to live like your family? What can you do to reduce your family's footprint? Give SPECIFIC examples. How will Civil Engineering be involved in reducing our ecological footprint? Give SPECIFIC examples for structural, geotechnical, transportation, environmental, AND water resources. Cite references backing up your answers.

Explanation / Answer

a) ecological foorprint means the impact of a person or community on the environment, expressed as the amount of land required to sustain their use of natural resources.

Ecological footprints can be calculated at any scale: for an activity, a person, a community, a city, a region, a nation or humanity as a whole. Cities, due to population concentration, have large ecological footprints and have become ground zero for footprint reduction.[6]

Global Footprints: Currently there is no fixed way to measure global footprints, and any attempts to describe the capacity of an ecosystem in a single number is a massive simplification of thousands of key renewable resources, which are not used or replenished at the same rate. However, there has been some convergence of metrics and standards since 2006.[5]

City Ecological Footprints: are being measured. There are two types of measurements in use. The first measures ecosystem displacement which is defined as City Area minus remaining green spaces. This is an area measurement that does not include human or other biological activity. The Second attempts to quantify surviving ecosystem health. Specifically, it attempts to quantify both area and biological health of ecosystems surviving inside city areas such as nature reserves, parks, other green spaces. City footprints are being calculated and ranked with city ecological indexes.

There seems to be a snowball effect when you start living your life more intentionally. For me, it started with money. I was desperate to get out of debt, so I looked for as many ways as I could to reduce our expenses. Eventually, that led me to natural health. Which led me to greener living. And that left me wondering how my family of six could reduce our ecological footprint and live more sustainably.

As I become more obsessed interested in reducing our family’s eco footprint, I find myself researching and implementing different ideas for doing so. Most things I try work, but not all are feasible for us to continue all the time (we just can’t commit to family cloth yet).

But by taking Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle to heart, you can implement simple, sustainable (albeit unconventional) ways to help your family lesser their impact on the earth.

1. Plan your meals:   Planning meals ahead of time not only helps you save money on groceries, but it will prevent leftovers from going bad. Plan for a week or for as far out as a month.

2. Shower less frequently

Don’t wrinkle your nose. Often, people shower (or bathe their kids) every day whether they need to or not. Before hopping in out of habit, think about whether it’s really necessary. I was able to go much longer after I started making my own shampoo because my scalp didn’t get itchy between showers.

3. Wear clothes more than once

This goes along with the showering thing. When I was in high school, wearing clothes more than once was so uncool. Now, my jeans see days of wear before they hit the washer. (When they’re clean of course.) Wash clothes only when they’re dirty to lower water and electricity usage.

4. Hang your clothes to dry

I get really excited when I see a laundry line. Silly, I know, but laundry lines make me happy. They’re so simple to use and can save tons of money. Obviously, you won’t be using as much electricity, but it will also help your clothes last longer since they’re not being pounded in the dryer.

5. Bring home less waste

Avoid food and other products with lots of packaging. Buying in bulk helps a lot since you won’t have individually wrapped things coming into your home (It’s great for your budget, too!) If eating out, take along a reusable container for leftovers so you don’t have to bring home a wasteful container from the restaurant.

6. Grow your own veggies

Many veggies are shipped long distances, using lots of fuel just to get to your grocery store. Start a simple garden to reduce dependency on grocery-store produce.

7. Make a windowsill herb garden

Most of the herbs for sale in our area come packaged in plastic boxes. Eh, no thanks. Grow some of your favorite herbs in a sunny windowsill so you can add flavor to your food without extra waste. I like basil, mint and cilantro the best.

8. Have a yard sale

You know how when you’re done decluttering, you have a ton of stuff lying around your house that you need to get rid of? Rather than throwing it away (some people do that!), have a yard sale to spare a landfill and make some money from your excess stuff. If it’s not yard sale weather, donate it to a local thrift store, list it on Freecycle, or sell items on Craigslist.

9. Use your car less

Make an effort to stay at home more and drive less. Walk, bike or use public transit if possible to reduce your contribution to air pollution. If you’re in a rural area and that’s not feasible, try to select one day for errands and group them all together.

10. Invest in reusable bags

Or make them from scrap fabric. Countless plastic bags end up in landfills each year and don’t need to be there. Either buy or make bags in different sizes and take them with you to the grocery store or farmer’s market. Make small ones to use with bulk bins and produce. (Find shopping bags online here or produce bags online here.)

11. Dress in layers

We’ve learned to do this when we play outdoor sports, but this is a simple trick that can keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer. When it’s cold, layer tees, long-sleeve shirts and sweaters, instead of turning up the heat. Avoid the AC with layers that you can remove (stay dressed of course).

12. Buy gently used clothing

I love used clothes and hand-me-downs. We’ve been gifted with so many over the years, that I’ve rarely had to buy clothes for my kids. And if I do, I start at a thrift store or consignment shop. Same goes for me. The trick? Look for brands that you know will last.

civil engineering involved in reducing our ecological foot print :

I think just about everyone knows the 3 R's - "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". My 6 yr old has been known to recite it on occasion, and to his credit he understands at least the basics of it. Recycling certainly gets the most air time and for the most part I think everyone associates the 3 R's with trash. Reducing often requires some sacrifice which most of us don't like and in our expendable society reuse is more often than not ignored. Recycling our trash is admirable and we should all do our best to do this very simple green task. But I believe that the 3 R's have merit beyond just our consumables. As a civil engineer and site designer I started thinking about how Reduce, Reuse, Recycle could be applied to what I do the most - site design. Here is what I came up with - the 3 R's of Sustainable Site Design.

REDUCE
Reduce is probably the most impactful of the 3 R's - after all it is listed first. The more we can reduce (consumption, development, etc) the less we will need to reuse and recycle. This applies to development and construction projects as well. If we first reduce, then we spend less time, money and energy trying to reuse, recycle, control etc. In the early phases of our site designs we, as design professionals need to be thinking about how we can reduce:

REUSE

If we are to assume that reduce has the most impact judging by its place in the 3 R's then we can also assume that reuse has the second greatest opportunity for impact - which I believe is true. In many ways reuse and recycle are interchangeable, but here we are going to consider that reuse does not require re-manufacturing, processing etc. Can we apply this to site design? I think so and here's how we can - reuse:

RECYCLE

Last and maybe least (depending on your viewpoint!) of the 3 R's is recycle. Recycling is certainly important, it can reduce raw material consumption, energy use and landfill space among other benefits. It's also one of the easiest and most visible green things that you can do. There are a lot of things you can do as a designer that the general public won't understand or appreciate but people can relate to recycling and that can propel more people to act sustainably. So beyond our trash, what can we as site designers recycle?

I am sure that are points that I missed here so please send your ideas my way if you have any thing to add. Ultimately, I think that the 3 R's are a good example that going green and creating more sustainable spaces doesn't have to be complicated. In engineering school the most important thing that they teach you is how to break down a problem into simple parts - and that's what the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra helps us do. And if you're not a civil engineer or site design professional hopefully you can use the 3 R's to make your life and work more sustainable.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse N
• Subjects

---

---

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.