Ecological Footprint Calculator
Find out how many Earths your lifestyle would need. Estimate your personal ecological footprint based on your diet, travel, home energy, and waste habits.
Calculate Your Ecological Footprint
Answer a few questions about your diet, travel, home energy, and waste habits to see an estimate of your ecological footprint in global hectares, and how many Earths it would take if everyone lived like you.
Lifestyle Details
Enter your typical weekly and monthly habits
Footprint Evaluation
Estimated ecological footprint from your lifestyle
Average Footprints by Region
Estimated number of Earths required if the world’s population lived like the average person in each region, based on Global Footprint Network figures.
| Region / Profile | Typical Footprint | Earths Needed |
|---|---|---|
| World average | ~2.5 global hectares | ~1.7 Earths |
| North America (average) | ~8.0 global hectares | ~5.0 Earths |
| Western Europe (average) | ~4.5 global hectares | ~2.8 Earths |
| Low-impact vegan lifestyle | ~1.3 global hectares | ~0.8 Earths |
| Sustainable target | ~1.6 global hectares | 1.0 Earth |
Ecological Footprint FAQ
Everything you need to know about ecological footprints and what they mean.
An ecological footprint measures how much productive land and water area a person’s lifestyle requires to produce the resources they consume and absorb the waste they generate. It is expressed in global hectares (gha).
Globally, humanity currently uses resources at a rate that would require more than 1.7 Earths to sustain, according to the Global Footprint Network. This figure varies widely by country, with high-income nations often requiring 3 to 5 Earths’ worth of resources per person.
A global hectare (gha) is a standardised unit that represents the average productivity of all biologically productive land and water on Earth in a given year, allowing footprints to be compared across countries and time periods.
Diet, transportation, and home energy use are typically the three largest contributors to a personal ecological footprint. Reducing meat consumption, flying less, driving less, and using renewable energy tend to produce the largest reductions.