apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'm doomed. I live in the suburbs and eat meat.

You're doomed? I live in the city and buy stuff! *sigh*

My score was fairly reasonable at around 2 Earths per person (it's all relative), but flying about 200 hours a year for work completely screws up my average.

I scored 2 -- most of it came from food . Heck, we're in Switzerland and eat a lot of cheese! But these cows eat grasses -- and they're local (there are 5 cows in front of our house!) -- I suspect that is not reflected in my score. (ditto for the wine, the grapes for which are grown just a few miles from our home).

i was FINE at 1.8 earths until FOOD AND SHOPPING - holy hell! my final is 4.4 earths. frick!

i was off the charts with FOOD because i eat really poorly and can't afford local/organic (no matter what you say, it IS more expensive to eat well, or at least more conscientiously)

and then SHOPPING because yeah, i buy stuff. and what?

I was 1 earth but that's not an option for the survey. The things it would take for me to be .5 are impossible- I can't renovate my apartment. But I would love to!

1.8

Good Grief I ended up with 3! The food is what got me!

3.1! I was doing great until I had to enter my coffee/alcohol consumption. 14 cups of coffee a week sounds much worse than 2 cups a day. Sheesh!

You need a less then 2 catagory. My score would have been much lower but for not upgrading our rental (so not going to pay for new appliances for our landlord) and I like cereals :)

According to this test, I am an exotic transvestite living in the city. While my conservation of energy useage is fastidious, my eating and drinking habits are rapidly destroying the earth at a rate of 4.3.

Hey...I'll toast to that!

1.4 (I was at 0.7 until the food section, and I'm vegetarian and eat local/organic when possible - I think it was my coffee habit that did me in!). I live in Canada.

I don't get it.
I buy mostly ALL local/organic (it's not really expensive in CA). But I drink a lot of coffee and wine. So that shot me up to 4.
But like I said... I'm from CA, and that where most of the wine I drink comes from. Seems like this "game" is a little off to me.

I never thought I'd score so poorly.
If conscious people like me (I recycle! I turn off lights!) are scoring over 3 earths, what about the BAD PEOPLE?!

We're fucked.

1.6

theserovingeyes - I felt the same way. I'm not the greenest person, but I definitely do my part. I'm really curious as to what the average American would score.

3.8. regardless of what else i do, i fly every week for work. my travel was up to a 9!
dumb.

I agree with the food issue -- I'm a vegetarian and purchase local and organic food more than half the time. But I love wine and coffee. However, I drink fair trade organic coffee and frequently local California wines. How that made my food/drink score higher than ANY of the others baffles me.

It seems to me that this game is hopelessly flawed because it can't take into consideration a lot of local factors, despite it asking where you're located. And it really doesn't do much more than to convey a sense of hopelessness, which isn't very helpful, either.

My score got bad when I put my flying in there – we fly twice a year to SFO-Helsinki and back. And that's bad.

The coffee did me in. I wonder how those caffeine pills taste dissolved in hot water?

I'm at 2 earths for where I live. One earth for power, garbage, shopping. No (zero) earths for transportation, I walk where I need to go, and take the bus less than once a month. The car doesn't run.

At 40 cups of coffee a week (yeah, I have an I.V. drip going of French Roast at all times) it tacks on 10 earths for the coffee/food habit. If I change the coffee to 4 cups, it's still at 8 earths. I don't eat meat, really. I mostly eat cereal products and soymilk. With some fruits and vegetables.

But none is local grown. So I'm thinking about checking out the Farmer's Market that is somewhere nearby. That might help a bit.

The worst part for the power expense is this damn fridge in the apartment. I do NOT need one this large. And now after seeing that, I'm thinking of locating a pair of small appliances, that are Energy Star. One small fridge. And a separate small freezer.

I have NOTHING in the freezer right now. There is no need to have a frozen freezer if there is nothing inside.

And for the fridge, the ONLY thing in there right now is some salad dressing and the soymilk that NEEDS refrigeration.

So 2.7 earths, and I don't drive or use gas. I don't buy stuff. Oh man. How depressing.

Say, has anyone tried replacing their coffee with wine or beer yet? On the quiz, not in real life, you fool!

But if we do that in real life, we will still make an impact on the earth, as our heads hit the pavement.

I know! We can just pile our garbage up to make the earth bigger!

my food was good until it came to how much beer i drink a week.. gulp.

Ditto with TRUE BLUE, speaking of habits I mean. 2.9 me

um...I was a 6

even though I'm a vegetarian, and I buy mostly organic/local

I drink a lot of coffee and alcohol...I live in New Orleans what do they expect...

what frustrates me are the issues I can't control...no recycling or reliable public transportation...for those we need help on a government level...

1.7, and I try really, really hard. I guess my apartment is too big (more than 500 sq. ft.), but mostly it was the food that did me in (I'm surprised because I'm a vegetarian who buys almost all local and organic, and i drink *no* coffee wine or beer and I still got a 4 on the little score sheet)

Quite frankly, this test is a bunch of hooey IMHO.

We are members/participants of a global community and economy. I am most certainly not going to stop buying fair trade products or Argentinian wines because some test created by an orginization that I hadn't heard of till now has branded my lifestyle choices as a planetary hazard.

You know what American Public Media....you are a bunch of stupid headed stupids.

I work at home, we don't buy stuff, and because I live in a big space, I'm doomed. A big space carved from a warehouse with no heat. Piffle.

And I drink wine that's made less than 100 miles from here. Double piffle.

I love this game! It has been out for awhile and I use it in my college sociology course on consumption and environment. Students are always amazed at their scores and which aspects of consumption have the biggest impact.

A great teaching tool!

Apparently I'm drinking the Earth to death. Who knew?

My coffee habit is killing the earth, too.

Also, my apartment may be slightly large for two people, but it's nearly a hundred years old with no central heat or air, and stuff's only on in the room when someone is in it. That's gotta be better than 3 earths, right?

No car; walk or train everywhere; small apartment w/ 3 people; recycle everything; buy local; buy organic except for . . . COFFEE.

And I try so hard.

how come there's no credit for bringing my own string bag to the store and NEVER using plastic bags?????

lol don't feel bad people, if measuring the effect on the earth was this simple, it would be easy to solve these problems. quite simple, we should all stop drinking alcohol or coffee... then what would be the point of my life?? lol

and they don't ask about A/C or heating or whether your house is power smart etc.

what is stupid is that i live in a 400 sq ft studio in a condo and my fridge is as big as the one in the 2 bedroom suite down the hall. even when there was booze and food for a party, it wasn't full... that's a waste of energy...

I got a 2.7 which really surprised me. I don't own a car, live 3 blocks away from work, take the light rail once a week at most, fly once a year, recycle religiously, live alone in a tiny studio, and I buy organic foods and used books and furniture when I can. And my gas/electric bill is only $25/month even in the summer. And I only eat meat 1-2 a week. What more am I supposed to do!?

DarrenB said:

"And it really doesn't do much more than to convey a sense of hopelessness, which isn't very helpful, either."

Which was reflected in many comments, such as "We're screwed" and "We're doomend", etc.

But, grasshoppers and weedwackers, remember that this quiz reflects what would happen if EVERYONE lived like ONE of us.

There's no way we can all live everyone else's lifestyle, right? There aren't enough hours in the day for me to eat everything that other people eat, drink what they drink, go where they go, buy what they buy, etc.

Consider the quiz instead as a helpful reminder of where you can cut back. You can go and retake the quiz again and again, seeing what the results are if you cut back here, or change some habit.

ALL of the choices we make as individuals affect ALL of us.

OK?

So if I am drinking down 40 cups of coffee and that's like 10 earths worth. And you are drinking only 4. And someone else is drinking 10. And so on. If we ALL cut back one cup...let's say 40 of us, that drops the earth load.

Because together we make a difference.

I can't really cut back much more on not driving, because I'm not driving. Ha! Walking backwards to the store won't help. That doesn't mean everyone has to stop driving...but maybe if everyone cut out ONE trip. Just one.

And for 40 people, that's FORTY TRIPS LESS! Right?

This works for any one individual item on that list. If we buy local fruits and veggies, when possible. That's a bunch of less fruits and veggies that have to be trucked in from a huge distance. Right? Because we do it together.

One less meat meal a week, forty people, forty less meat meals a week. 400 people, 400 less meat meals.

I generally only have meat when I have pizza (at least that is what they call those chunks on the top that are brown, and I believe them). Or the occasional BK burger on the way home from the store (walking). I've cut back on the BK. That helps.

I use a lot of power, even though I am not running heavy duty power equipment, as I am HOME all the time. So the fridge is being opened often. Or lights get flicked on and off. I'm going to work on that.

And I'm seriously thinking about buying a mini-fridge of my own that is Energy Star and having them remove this behemoth energy sucker from my kitchen.

Because the costs of electricity to run that thing will make up for the cost of the mini fridge. And once the mini fridge has paid for itself, it will continue to offer a savings.

So, just as you might exercise to work on a problem spot, your whole body reaps the benefits...if we each work on our problem spots from the quiz, our whole earth will reap the benefits.

My score shot up b/c the rest of my family lives about 600-700 miles from me. Wonder how driving vs. flying would compare...

Anyone got a working teleporter I could use?

Try this other quiz, everyone. It's linked from the first one. It's your carbon footprint.
http://www.myfootprint.org/en/

My score went down considerably, using the information THEY wanted.

And, it keeps a running tally of you vs. the "average" so you can see what happens when you make a selection. And you can unclick selections or try other selections to see what kind of a difference it makes.

It's still not perfect, as there are many questions that do not apply to me. Like I don't have a dishwasher and do laundry by hand.

You can get a feeling for what REALLY makes the big differences. And many questions have a link to how to improve that area.

And that's what we need, to try to improve our most problematic areas. Each person's problem area may well be different.

Here is the pop-up box on diet:
A plant-based diet is significantly less land and energy intensive than a diet with a high proportion of meat, seafood, and dairy. A recent study found that a low-fat vegetarian diet needs 0.18 hectares per person per year while a high-fat diet with lots of meat needs 0.85 hectares because animals need so much more room. And because meat production drives deforestation and requires high inputs of energy for processing and transportation, it also comes with a high carbon footprint price tag. Globally, it has been estimated that 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions are associated with meat consumption.
======

We won't discuss my own gas emissions as a result of the high fiber items...

2.4 earths. Coffee and wine. You really don't want me to give up the coffee.

Minimal consumption, organics, green energy, apartment, and no coffee or wine ... close to 3 earths. WTF.