My Ecological Footprint

Soooo I was pretty horrified when my results said that if everyone lived the way I do, we would need 7.25 Earths; that is so ridiculous!! It was a short, simple quiz that spoke volumes of my careless lifestyle and my nonchalant attitude towards the environment.  Its scary to think of how many "me's" there are out there!  Some things that I could do to reduce my ecological footprint would be to eat more organic foods with less packaging and to eat less meat; according the quiz results it is estimated that up to 18% of all greenhouse gases are from meat consumption.  I didn't even know that! I can't think of a meal where we don't eat meat, we are definitely carnivores! Pork chops, tacos, chicken alfredo, etc.  Chicken sandwich or beef burrito for lunch....it never ends!  It actually seems odd to me NOT to have meat at a meal....if I even take meat off my menu for one day a week, I could make a difference.  Another thing to do is to walk or ride a bike more, or try to use public transit; where I am located, it is somewhat difficult to arrange that, but only because a 45 minute bike ride to work seems extremely unreasonable to me.  There is little in the way of public transit for my area, especially since I live on county lines;  I live in Sarsota County but work in Charlotte County, and I don't think the sarasota county transit drives into charlotte county, so this proves to be a problem.  I could also flush less often, brush with the water turned off, turn off all the lights, use energy efficient light bulbs and appliances.  There are so many things we can do to reduce our ecological footprint, and most of them aren't that difficult!!