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Read about the Global Footprint Network and learn how to find your personal footprint.
Read about the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, an organization that has transformed the way food is grown, basing its techniques on Alan Chadwick's farming systems started almost forty years ago.
Read about how two creative individuals have found a unique way to make one-of-a-kind notebooks from vintage record sleeves, thrift store buys and reclaimed office paper, each with their own interwoven papergeist.
Find out what technology exists to create a significant amount of paper from alternative fibers.
Read about TerraCycle™ Inc.,
the world's first company to mass
produce a product that actually
leaves a negative ecological
footprint.
Meet eco-innovator,
Larry Zirkle of
Total
Reclaim,Inc.
PROFILE: Global Footprint Network
In 2006, the global ecological footprint outpaced the Earth’s biological capacity by 30 percent. This trend is increasing. In fact, on September 23rd of this year, we passed “Overshoot Day,” the day the human ecological footprint exceeded the Earth’s biocapacity. [1] and began living beyond its ecological means.
Since then, we have been engaged in the ecological equivalent of deficit spending: our rate of resource consumption is exceeding the rate at which those resources can be naturally replenished.
Conceived of in 1990 by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees at the University of British Columbia, the ecological footprint is used by scientists, businesses, governments, agencies, institutions, and individuals working to monitor ecological resource use and to advance sustainable development. The ecological footprint has emerged as the world’s premier measure of humanity’s demand on nature. It uses current technology to quantify the amount of land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb the wastes it produces.
Want to find out about your personal footprint? Click here.
The Global Footprint Network was formally established in 2003 and encourages the use of this resource accounting tool to help us manage our ecological assets more wisely and take personal and collective action enabling all people to live well, within the means of one planet.
Coupled with various other environmental groups, the Global Footprint Network biennially publishes ‘The Living Planet Report,’ revealing the “extent of human pressure on the planet, how it compares across nations, and how it is impacting the natural world.” [2] As stated on Ecological Footprint Network’s website, it is likely that the countries and regions with surplus ecological reserves, and not the ones relying on continued ecological deficit spending, will emerge as the robust and sustainable economies and societies of the future.
The Network seeks to incite decision-makers at all levels in society and within powerful institutions to use the Footprint and kindle a global movement to end ecological overshoot. Through its programs, it intends to engender solutions and expects to achieve results that will redirect billions of dollars of investment flows toward making sustainable human development a reality.
Together with hundreds of individuals, 200 cities, 23 nations, leading business, scientists, NGOs, academics and their 90-plus global partners on six continents, the Network aims to apply the Footprint to practical projects and spark a global dialogue about how we can facilitate change to create a “one-planet future.” Accurately measuring human impact on the Earth so that we can make informed choices about consumption is the important first step in creating a one-planet future.
For more information on which Footprint Calculator to use, check out:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/frequently_asked_questions/
For more detailed information about The Global Footprint Network, please visit:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/
[1] This is calculated by dividing world biocapacity by the global ecological footprint, then multiplying by 365= 267th day= 9.23.08
[2] The Global Footprint Network website (December 2008): http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/
“We could go to ecological bankruptcy, if we continue to use
more than what nature can regenerate.”
-- Mathis Wackernagel, co-founder
In 2006, the global ecological footprint outpaced the Earth’s biological capacity by 30 percent. This trend is increasing. In fact, on September 23rd of this year, we passed “Overshoot Day,” the day the human ecological footprint exceeded the Earth’s biocapacity. [1] and began living beyond its ecological means.
Since then, we have been engaged in the ecological equivalent of deficit spending: our rate of resource consumption is exceeding the rate at which those resources can be naturally replenished. Conceived of in 1990 by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees at the University of British Columbia, the ecological footprint is used by scientists, businesses, governments, agencies, institutions, and individuals working to monitor ecological resource use and to advance sustainable development. The ecological footprint has emerged as the world’s premier measure of humanity’s demand on nature. It uses current technology to quantify the amount of land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb the wastes it produces.
Want to find out about your personal footprint? Click here.
The Global Footprint Network was formally established in 2003 and encourages the use of this resource accounting tool to help us manage our ecological assets more wisely and take personal and collective action enabling all people to live well, within the means of one planet.
Coupled with various other environmental groups, the Global Footprint Network biennially publishes ‘The Living Planet Report,’ revealing the “extent of human pressure on the planet, how it compares across nations, and how it is impacting the natural world.” [2] As stated on Ecological Footprint Network’s website, it is likely that the countries and regions with surplus ecological reserves, and not the ones relying on continued ecological deficit spending, will emerge as the robust and sustainable economies and societies of the future.
The Network seeks to incite decision-makers at all levels in society and within powerful institutions to use the Footprint and kindle a global movement to end ecological overshoot. Through its programs, it intends to engender solutions and expects to achieve results that will redirect billions of dollars of investment flows toward making sustainable human development a reality.
Together with hundreds of individuals, 200 cities, 23 nations, leading business, scientists, NGOs, academics and their 90-plus global partners on six continents, the Network aims to apply the Footprint to practical projects and spark a global dialogue about how we can facilitate change to create a “one-planet future.” Accurately measuring human impact on the Earth so that we can make informed choices about consumption is the important first step in creating a one-planet future.
For more information on which Footprint Calculator to use, check out:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/frequently_asked_questions/
For more detailed information about The Global Footprint Network, please visit:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/
[1] This is calculated by dividing world biocapacity by the global ecological footprint, then multiplying by 365= 267th day= 9.23.08
[2] The Global Footprint Network website (December 2008): http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/
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