Living in the Dartmouth bubble, we often forget that our actions have impacts beyond Hanover. Some of these impacts come in the form of environmental impacts from our use of resources and our disposal of waste. To get a better idea of this impact, I recently blitzed the campus a link to an "Ecological Footprint Calculator" and asked students to complete the survey and blitz me the results, along with other information about themselves. Over 200 students participated in the survey, providing a unique look at Dartmouth's ecological footprint.
Before getting to the results of the survey though, we need to figure out what an ecological footprint really is. Simply put, it's the amount of biologically productive land and water each person uses to support his or her lifestyle. The survey used is certainly an oversimplification, and this project was not an attempt to determine an exact Dartmouth student's footprint. However, it does provide an estimate of the average student's impact, and the trends in the data provide some interesting insights.
So, on to the results. The average Dartmouth student who responded to the survey requires 16.2 acres of land to support him or herself. If everyone on earth used the quantity of resources that the average Dartmouth student uses, we would need 4.7 earths to support us. Interestingly, Dartmouth's footprint is smaller than the average American's footprint of 25.4 acres. Most likely two things contribute to this: Dartmouth students do not drive all that much (compared to a large portion of the population that commutes significant distances to work each day), and we share relatively small living spaces with lots of people. Each respondent's footprint was also broken down by food, transportation, housing, and "other." Doing some statistical analysis on these sections of the footprint revealed some interesting results. On the food side of things, for each year older a Dartmouth student gets, our food footprint increases by 0.29 percent. (The average student's waistline might increase each year as well). The average female's food footprint is 16.7 percent smaller than the average male's food footprint. International students' food footprint was a whopping 47.3 percent smaller than the average domestic student's food footprint. Finally, for each point increase on a one to six scale of concern for the environment (with one being "I don't care at all" and six being "I care a whole lot"), the food footprint decreases by 9.4 percent. People who are more concerned are more likely to follow vegetarian diets.
Similarly, for each point increase in environmental concern, the average transportation footprint decreased by 19.3 percent, perhaps due to the use of more fuel efficient vehicles or carpooling. Relative to New Englanders, students from the West, the Midwest, and the South had transportation footprints that were 61.4 to 87.5 percent higher, most likely due to more air travel to and from Dartmouth, which racks up the resource use.
ORL should be proud because students who live in dorms have smaller housing footprints. Students residing in Greek houses or off-campus had housing footprints that were 32.7 percent and 41.1 percent higher respectively than those students who live on campus. Furthermore, environmental concern had no relation to housing footprint. Also of note, there is no evidence for various common stereotypes. Greeks are often seen as environmentally unfriendly, but the only place where their footprint is bigger than the rest of Dartmouth is in the housing section (and only because of the very communal nature of dorms). Students who major in environmentally related fields such as environmental studies, earth sciences, environmental and evolutionary biology, etc., do not have smaller footprints on the whole. Aside from the transportation footprint, footprints did not vary at all based students' hometown regions. Outside of Dartmouth, females are often seen as more environmentally friendly. While Dartmouth females eat less than Dartmouth males (not surprisingly), they have larger transportation footprints than males, and no differences elsewhere.
So what can we learn from these results? Perhaps the biggest thing to realize is that even though we live in a bubble, and even though each of us is only one person out of more than 6.4 billion people, each of us uses a significant amount of resources and prevents others from being able to use these resources. Remember this fact the next time you think your actions don't matter. They do. So, remember to turn off lights, appliances, and computers when they're not in use. Buy a more fuel efficient car, buy energy-saving lights, and don't buy anything if you don't really need it. Carpool, recycle, compost, and conserve. Learn about the impacts of your actions, and take the ecological footprint quiz, if you haven't already. You can find it at www.mec.ca. Click on "About MEC," then "Social and Environmental," and then "Eco-Footprint Calculator." You might be surprised at just how big your footprint really is.
