What is a carbon footprint or an environmental footprint or an ecological footprint?

Carbon footprints:
A carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide that one person creates and uses with all the things he or she does.

It is how much damage on the environment that something has. The carbon footprint for a bottle of water would add up the negative environmental impact of manufacturing plastic bottles and truck emissions for delivering the water. Your house would have a carbon footprint.

Reducing carbon footprints: You could lower the carbon footprint of your house by doing things like using CFL lighting and energy efficient appliances, and adding insulation. There are websites that help you determine carbon footprints

Carbon is a significant contributer to global warming through the greenhouse effect.

A person's carbon footprint is defined by looking at how much of what they do in their lives contributes even a small amount to global warming. Such things include recycling, driving where it is possible to walk and not switching off house lights. We can reduce our carbon footprint by being more ecologically friendly.

A:

An ecological or carbon footprint measures how much of the planet's resources you use, and converts this to the amount of land needed to provide the resources and assimilate your waste. It is measured in global hectares (a hectare is about the size of a soccer field). It includes:

• The amount of building materials you use in your home and workplace
• The amount of water you use in your home, workplace and garden
  
• The fossil fuels (oil, coal, wood and natural gas) needed
  

A recent study (October 2008) ranks the top ten countries with the highest ecological footprint per head as:

1. United Arab Emirates
2. United States
3. Kuwait
4. Denmark
5. Australia
6. New Zealand
7. Canada
8. Norway
9. Estonia
10. Ireland.

First answer by Ksmail. Last edit by Cobber43. Contributor trust: 25 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 45 [recommend question]