What You Can DoHow can you tread lightly?When Australian consumption is viewed from a global perspective, we leave a large 'ecological footprint'. The ecological footprint is a measure of how much productive land and water is needed to produce the resources that are consumed and absorb the wastes produced by a person or group of people. In 2001, there were 1.8 hectares of globally productive land per person. In 2004 Australia's ecological footprint was calculated at 7.7 hectares per person (among the world's top four resource-consuming nations) compared to the average global footprint of 2.2 hectares. In other words each of us require about 7.7 soccer fields of resources to support our lifestyle. If the world's population enjoyed our standard of living, we would need about four Earths to support us. Clearly, the consumption of resources at current levels is not sustainable. SPA does not concentrate its efforts on education and advocacy to reduce consumption rates or ecological footprints, as there are already many organisations working in this area. See below for some information on how to reduce your footprint in order to tread lightly on the earth.
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