quote:

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CATEGORY ACRES

FOOD 5.9

MOBILITY 0.2

SHELTER 1.5

GOODS/SERVICES 1.5

TOTAL FOOTPRINT 9

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I was a bit surprised after I took this (partially because it added to 9 instead of 9.1). The average person in the US uses 24 acres. The world only has 4.5 biologically productive acres per person. That means that if everyone was me, we'd need 2.1 planets to keep going. Eek.
 

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Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
 
Thanks pfresh, it does help

I was very confused until I realised those numbers were in acres rather than hectares.

Perhaps some of the numbers were rounded down and the calculator added the unrounded figures?

If everyone lived like me, we'd need 3 Earths...
 

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Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
 
Euripedes, very very interesting maps. I've been scrolling through, fascinated.

I found this one on rabies particularly interesting and not at all surprising, given the number of stray dogs here.


Footprint calculator. I've done it before and was pleasantly surprised how low our footprint here was. We're in Sri Lanka, an upper middle class household with four adults. They don't have Sri Lanka on their list, so I've gone with India for these purposes. That will, of course, skew the results, but I really don't know which country would be better for me to use instead. Sri Lanka is cleaner than India - better sanitation, cleaner water - and less crowded, so I suspect the footprint should be larger.


QUIZ RESULTS

CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD 0.5
MOBILITY 0
HOUSING 0.6
GOODS/SERVICES 0.2
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 1.3


IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 0.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXISTS 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1 PLANETS TO LIVE ON
 

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Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
 
Oh wow quid, you're living fairly sustainably!

quote:

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I found this one on rabies particularly interesting and not at all surprising, given the number of stray dogs here.

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quote:

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TOTAL FOOTPRINT 2.5 (hectares)
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 4.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

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I think the thing that dings you in Japan is having your food "come from far away."
 

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Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
 
I'm not a person who understands statistics, so this is kind of dangerous, but I'm enjoying the worldmapper immensely.

I was glad to find the map on diabetes prevalence because I suspected a high level in Japan. I just met SO many people with diabetes. In an otherwise healthy culture, my guess about its cause is an almost absolute lack of whole grains.
 

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Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
 
Hey, Euripedes, it's pretty easy to live sustainably here. We don't have a car and most travel is by trishaw (which they don't have a category for, but is closest to a motorcycle & uses a 2 stroke or 4 stroke engine). Processed foods are not common here (although becoming increasingly so), so cooking from scratch is the easiest way to have any amount of variety. We live four adults to a house, which is culturally the norm.

I'm sure that, factored into the sustainability for India (I'm guessing that India is similar to Sri Lanka in this regard), is that a lot of people have fruit trees (mangoes, banana, papaya, limes, jumboo, mangosteen, rambutan, etc) in their yards planted among their other bushes or trees. Some people have way way more than others, of course, but it's that common.

If I were answering this the way I lived in Canada, living alone and driving a car, those two factors alone would drive my footprint way way way up.


As for rabies, did you notice that Sri Lanka, that blob under India, is also disproportionately large? Rabies is a known problem here and wouldn't take a Dr. House to diagnose.
 

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Posted by pfresh85 (Member # 8085) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Annie:
I took the quiz again, answering as if I were my missionary self in Japan a couple months ago. Here were my results then:

quote:

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TOTAL FOOTPRINT 2.5 (hectares)
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 4.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

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I think the thing that dings you in Japan is having your food "come from far away."

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quote:

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CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES

FOOD 1.5

MOBILITY 0

SHELTER 0.9

GOODS/SERVICES 0.7

TOTAL FOOTPRINT 3.1

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quote:

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Originally posted by Annie:

I think the thing that dings you in Japan is having your food "come from far away."

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quote:

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Originally posted by quidscribis:

As for rabies, did you notice that Sri Lanka, that blob under India, is also disproportionately large?

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Yeah I did. Now that I look at the population map again, I see that Sri Lanka is not as populous as I thought it was; the exaggeration in the rabies map really is quite severe. The Philippines and SEA don't seem to be fairing well in that department either.

Do the fruit trees save on grocery shopping considerably?

Thanks for your survey input folks
 

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Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
 
Ugh.

quote:

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FOOD 5.4 acres
MOBILITY 0.2 acres
SHELTER 2.5 acres
GOODS/SERVICES 2.5 acres
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 11 acres

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 2.4 PLANETS.

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I live in the suburbs, with 4 kids. I drive almost everywhere I go.
 

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Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
 
Seems like a pretty slim set of questions to produce any kind of reliability.

Seems to me like we need fewer people around, because it says I use 12 acres, which is 2.7 planets worth of sustainable use, but still only HALF of the US average.

I guess it's a good thing so many people live on tiny footprints. Thanks for taking one for the team
 

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Posted by Tristan (Member # 1670) on :
 

quote:

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CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD 1.3
MOBILITY 0.2
SHELTER 1.6
GOODS/SERVICES 2.1


TOTAL FOOTPRIN 5.2



IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 6.7 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.



IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 2.9 PLANETS.

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quote:

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by quidscribis:

As for rabies, did you notice that Sri Lanka, that blob under India, is also disproportionately large?

---

Yeah I did. Now that I look at the population map again, I see that Sri Lanka is not as populous as I thought it was; the exaggeration in the rabies map really is quite severe. The Philippines and SEA don't seem to be fairing well in that department either.

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Yup. Rabies is a big problem in this area of the world. Stray dogs are rampant. Part of the problem is that the Buddhists (as one example), the majority of the population, believe it's wrong to kill animals, so even though there are dog pounds and the like, they're no-kill. Also, they capture only a very very very small amount of the stray dog population. Yet they're also against spaying and neutering. They also think it's a good thing to feed the strays.

At any given moment, standing on our balcony, I'll see between 3 and 10 stray dogs.

Then the cats... There's a neighborhood cat that gives birth on our back balcony behind our water tank - an area that's inaccessible to us. Other neighborhood cats whine from the walls around the house. They try to eat my cat's food. If any door or window is open and unattended, they'll try to come in to eat whatever they can find. They'll dig into the garbage outside. We had to get a special locking garbage can specifically because of the mess the cats make.

Then there are the rats & squirrels and, yeah, don't forget the monkeys. Last week, two monkeys (yes, I got photos!) were on the roof of our house, then climbed across the power lines to the trees at the gate. Rats and squirrels are everywhere, too, including the occasional one lying on the front lawn, dead.

quote:

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Do the fruit trees save on grocery shopping considerably?

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It can. It's also at least partially because people here can be really really picky about their fruit. Grow your own, and it tastes better, it's fresher, and less blemished.

But fruit was just one example. A huge diversity of plants are used in food here - plants most North Americans would consider weeds and leaves from some trees, for example.

Many other plants are used in Ayurveda, the local herbal medicinal remedies which, yes, actually work very well. Ayurveda is widely used, including by those who also use Western medicine. And doctors of Western medicine here are at least faintly familiar with Ayurvedism and will suggest using it in some circumstances and at least recognize its value.


Most people who live in houses and have yards (apartments are not common here, and that's another story) have gardens of varying types. They may not replace a family's entire grocery bill, but it can go a long way towards lessening it.

Plus, when you have a bumper crop, you give away to all your neighbors, friends, relatives, or sell the surplus. Fahim's brother brought us a 5 pound bag of limes from his work's garden. (He's a factory manager, and apparently, the factory has a garden, which I find really really cool. ) He would have brought a bigger bag had he known I wanted more. I'm going to salt-preserve some of them.

Some fruits are used in curries, like sour mangoes & amberellas. Coconut is used for its milk, oil, and when it's shredded, in mallungs. Limes are used in juice, the juice used in some curries, salted lime in other curries. Jak fruit & breadfruit are curried (and Oh. My. Goodness! they're good!).

For example, we have a couple of curry leaf trees (used for seasoning - still very small), two papaya trees (the oldest one is four or five months old and four feet tall, just blossomed, and will start growing fruit from that blossom now), lemongrass (which I just started growing - used for seasoning), a lime tree (3 or 4 years old, so won't fruit for another 3 or 4 more years), pepper plants, gotakola plants, and a bunch more. At the other house, there's a mango tree that drops at least a hundred pounds of mango a year - it's still very young. There's also a full-grown curry leaf tree and a whole lot more that I don't know about.

Another family I know has three (at least) mango trees in their yard, each of which currently has hundreds of mangos hanging from it - they'll be ripe in a few more weeks or so. Each of those trees drops thousands of mangoes a year, and a mango tree can live and bear fruit for up to 300 years.

Take a banana plant. It can produce about a hundred pounds of bananas in less than a year. Then the root sends up a new shoot, which grows a new banana plant, and it starts all over.

Would that make a difference to your grocery bill?
 

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Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
 
Wow, I was imagining a 2 meter square herb garden and a single low-yield mango tree.

How big are Sri Lankan gardens, typically? Is it a middle class luxury to have so many plants?

Sounds like great fun (and a penny saver too, to understate things). I had to look up some of the Sri Lankan dishes you mentioned.

As for the dogs, cats, monkeys, rats, and squirrels, it sounds like a bit too much wildlife for my taste! Dogs and cats aren't considered sacred in any way though, are they? I'm assuming the reluctance to harm/neuter them is more of a generic reprehension towards harming animals.

No doubt you've answered this question before I arrived at Hatrack, but would you mind if I ask how easy/difficult it was for you to adjust to Sri Lanka as a Canadian? I know my dad had a rough time finding his feet in Japan at first. After getting married he and my mum did the rounds on the Japanese side of the family, and for about a week everyone insisted on feeding him sushi (it being a ceremonial dish).
 

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Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
 

quote:

---

Wow, I was imagining a 2 meter square herb garden and a single low-yield mango tree.

How big are Sri Lankan gardens, typically? Is it a middle class luxury to have so many plants?

---

A single low-yield mango tree would be a young mango tree like the inlaws have at their other house which yields a hundred pounds or so of fruit a year. Once it's 20 years old (-ish), it'll be yielding as much as the other mango trees I mentioned.

Herbs are grown here or there, wherever there's room, under this plant or that.

Let me give you a bit of an idea. The lime tree we have - which is about five or six feet tall - is growing right beside the wall, so as it grows, it'll poke over the wall.

The jumboo fruit tree is half in our yard, half poking over the wall. The lot next door is empty and has several banana trees growing, as well as coconut palms.

Between the wall and the house is a space about four, maybe five, feet wide. In those four or five feet, there's a walkway right beside the house about two feet wide, the rest is plants, trees, bushes. All along the house, the entire way around the house.
There are more plants - trees, bushes, potted plants - along the wall at the front of the house. It's making the most of very small spaces.

See, yards (in the city) here are much, much smaller than in, say, the US. The very poor (those who are not homeless, at any rate) live in shacks/huts that might be as small as 4'x4' to 8'x8', lining the railroad tracks as close as 2' away from the train as it passes by, for example, or lining the side of a river (which has all manner of garbage and icky things in it, so it'll smell). Or they might be lining the beaches. At any rate, they're squatters - they don't own the land. Even then they usually have plants on their front stoop - potted, certainly not fruit trees.

Besides fruit trees in people's yards, they're also frequently found on empty lots (there's one lot I can think of that has 20 or so banana trees, as well as a couple of papaya trees and coconut trees) and on the empty spaces between yards and road or such.

Someone picks those stray fruit trees.


But to have a yard as large as we have, yes, it's middle class luxury.

quote:

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Dogs and cats aren't considered sacred in any way though, are they? I'm assuming the reluctance to harm/neuter them is more of a generic reprehension towards harming animals.

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You've got it.

quote:

---

No doubt you've answered this question before I arrived at Hatrack, but would you mind if I ask how easy/difficult it was for you to adjust to Sri Lanka as a Canadian?

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Read my blog. It started when I left Canada for here. In all fairness, I haven't written in it in a long time and I've been meaning to get it caught up... Still, there's a lot there about my experiences here.

[ March 12, 2007, 04:07 AM: Message edited by: quidscribis ]
 

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Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
 
Thanks quid, that was fascinating. I have a garden about the size of yours, which supports a small patch of grass and some dark evergreen inedible bushes.

The link to your blog seems to point to Hatrack. If it was someone less amiable than yourself, I'd assume this was a hint that I should dig up your post history.
 

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Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
 
No, that was me being an idiot. It's fixed now, provided my brain is working properly, which is currently debateable.
 

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Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
 
Thank you

What a variety in food!

Do I have to log in to view the journal entries at travelsrilanka.com?
 

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Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
 
Oh, you made it there, did you? I have no idea - haven't been there in a while. They don't have very many articles on their site, unfortunately, but what's there is interesting.

I also have photos you can look at.
 

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Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
 
I think the links to those journal entries might be obsolete or the entries themselves might have been lost in the ether? The links refer me to the front page. Just FYI; because I like to know when links on my site die, as irritating as it is to find out.

Done just right, this is one of my favourite dishes

Sweet capitalism
 

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Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
 
That first dish was done just right, near as I can tell. It was... fantastic!

As for the two other photos... We also have Pizza Hut, Dominoes Pizza, and KFC. While McDonalds is McDonalds, the others are sad disappointments. Not to say that McDonalds is great, it's just that it's the same as everywhere else, and therefore dependable. Oh, except McDonalds also has McChicken Buryani and McRice. Soda pop choices includes Portello (sort of like a red cherry type of pop, but better) and Ginger Beer, which is the bigger badder bitin' back version of Ginger Ale.
 

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Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
 
Does it bother anyone else that military spending is lumped into the 'violence' category?
 

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Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
 
I know what you mean quid; dependability is probably McDonalds only virtue!

quote:

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Originally posted by TheHumanTarget:

Does it bother anyone else that military spending is lumped into the 'violence' category?

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code:

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FOOD 3.7 
 
 MOBILITY 2 
 
 SHELTER 6.2 
 
 GOODS/SERVICES 5.4 
 
 TOTAL FOOTPRINT 17 

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(acres -- I'm in the U.S.)

Numbers skewed by the fact that I live alone. I don't take public transportation, but I do walk or bicycle plenty of places, which wasn't accounted for.
 

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Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
 
Thanks
 

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Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
 
FOOD 5.7
MOBILITY 2.5
SHELTER 3.7
GOODS/SERVICES 5.7
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 18



IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.



IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 3.9 PLANETS.

I suspect this is largely due to:
1) I live in a place with over 1,000,000 people.
2) I have electricity and don't make any efforts to conserve it.
3) I eat meat with practically every meal (to me, it's not a meal if there's no meat, it's just a snack).
4) I drive a car ~12 miles to and from work, although I have a passenger one way.
5) I really don't care about my impact on the environment.

Also, have you noticed that this thing changes the number of "biologically productive acres per person" for every set of results?
 

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