What’s your global footprint?

We all like to think we’re doing our part to promote sustainability. We recycle, ride our bikes as much as possible, wash our clothes in cold water, and turn out the lights when we leave the room. But does that mean we are really living sustainably?

One way of measuring sustainability that has emerged in recent years is the concept of global footprint. It asks a basic question of us: How many planet Earths would it take if everyone lived like we do?

The Global Footprint Network (www.footprintnetwork.org) was established in 2003 to measure human impact on the earth. It has developed a method of measuring—a “resource accounting tool”—it calls an “ecological footprint” to measure the impact of countries, cities, businesses and individuals.

You can take a fun, interactive quiz to measure your personal footprint. As you respond to questions about what you eat, how you get around and what kind of house you live in, the test creates an animated cityscape to depict your living environment and then tells what you what your footprint is.

It also gives you advice on how to decrease that footprint’s size—advice you’re going to need, since almost all Americans live in a way that would require several planet Earths if everyone lived that way.