Did you know NC has one of the highest rates of power consumption in the US? Or that the average American throws out 4 pounds of trash every day? Or that coffee is the second most heavily-traded and highly-traveled commodity in existence (after oil)?
You can learn facts like these and discover more about your personal ecological footprint by playing “Consumer Consequences.” This fun online game lets you input data about your lifestyle—like the foods you eat, your electricity bill, and how you get to work—and witness the corresponding effect on the world. With each question comes a new sustainability-related fact, and a new change in the digital environment. See the world stay green, or watch as coal plants and factories take over the horizon, landfills and highways fill the neighborhood, and pollution clogs the air—that is, if you’re living unsustainably!
In the end, a final calculation shows how many Earths it would take it would take to sustain the world’s population if everyone lived just like you. A graph further pinpoints areas to work on. I tried it: turns out I use up 1.7 Earths!
Can you beat my score? Or should we start heading to Mars?
