Why is my title called ''Going from 2.8 Earths to 1'' ?
The reason why the title of my blog is ''Going from 2.8 Earths to 1'', is because I recently did an online carbon footprint quiz which shows you how many Earths you would need if everyone lived like you; and I got 2.8 Earths.
Now, am I happy with that? No. Was I surprised? to be honest, yes.
To break it down, the quiz asks you questions like how often you eat animal products, if your food is organic or unpackaged, what type of housing you live in, your mode of transportation, etc.
The reason why I was surprised is that I do not eat a lot of animal products, a lot of my food is unpackaged, and I live in student accommodation. No, I am not perfect, I did not expect 1 Earth, but I did think I would get less than 2.8...
As I was doing the quiz it all seemed fine, but then came THE question, the question that took me from possibly 1.9 Earths to 2.8. The question was, ''how many hours do you fly each year''. Ouch....
So, I do travel a lot, I live in Hong Kong, but most of my family lives in Europe, which means that I at least travel to Europe and back once a year, already accumulating 22 hours overall. For the quiz, I chose a year where I flew the most, 2018. This was the year I moved from Hong Kong to the UK to study, and I got a whopping number of 66 hours!!
Besides the fact that I spent 66 hours of a year on a flight, during those flights, harmful pollutants were being released directly into our upper atmosphere where they can potentially remain longer and cause extensive damage!! (this is just in short why flying is damaging - will do an other post on that!)
I did know this before flying, but I sadly never thought about it, and it surely has dawned on me how quickly flying increases your carbon footprint. Especially when I then calculated a year in which I was not moving from Hong Kong to the UK.
This is where I got 1.9 Earths, which still isn't great, but is a massive difference compared to 2.8.
Honestly, I am disappointed that I barely ever thought about how much flying polluted, but aside from flying, this simple quiz proves that there is still a lot that I can improve on.
So, in short, I decided to make this the title of my blog, as it is a continuous reminder of the overall goal that I am trying to achieve. By going vegan and zero-waste, I am simply aiming to be kinder to our planet! :) (more about my journey so far on my lifestyle page - coming soon).
Thanks for reading!
Martina
Link to the quiz: http://www.footprintcalculator.org/
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