Meaning & use
ecological footprint
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A measure of how much land and resources a person, group, or activity uses, and how much waste it produces.
Grammar: Countable: an ecological footprint, ecological footprints. Often used with a possessive: our ecological footprint.
Patterns
- ecological footprint of someone/something
- reduce your ecological footprint
- a large/small ecological footprint
Flying frequently greatly increases your ecological footprint.
The report compares the ecological footprint of city dwellers with that of rural households.
Simple changes like eating less meat can shrink your ecological footprint.
nouncountabletechnicalspecialist
The area of land and water needed to supply a population with resources and absorb its waste.
Grammar: Used in environmental science and policy, often with figures: a footprint of 2.5 global hectares per person.
Patterns
- the ecological footprint of a country
- measured in global hectares
- exceed the ecological footprint
The ecological footprint of the region is larger than its own land can support.
Scientists calculate the national ecological footprint in units of global hectares.
If everyone lived like the average person in that country, we would need several planets to meet the global ecological footprint.
Word forms
| plural | ecological footprints |
|---|
Common combinations
- reduce your ecological footprint
- Cycling to work is an easy way to reduce your ecological footprint.
- carbon footprint
- The carbon footprint focuses only on greenhouse gases, while the ecological footprint covers all resource use.
- leave an ecological footprint
- Every purchase we make leaves an ecological footprint.
- measure the ecological footprint
- The study measured the ecological footprint of the university campus.
- large ecological footprint
- Meat-heavy diets have a large ecological footprint.
Synonyms and how they differ
- environmental impact
- Broader and not a fixed measure; ecological footprint suggests a calculated amount of land or resources.
- carbon footprint
- Narrower: it counts only greenhouse gas emissions, not all resources and waste.
Word family
- footprint noun
- The mark left by a foot; also used figuratively for the space or effect something has.
- ecological adjective
- Relating to the relationship between living things and their environment.
Commonly confused: ecological footprint or carbon footprint?
ecological footprint vs carbon footprint
People often use the two interchangeably, but carbon footprint measures only carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, while ecological footprint includes all resource use and waste.
Practice
Choosing public transport instead of driving alone can significantly ___ your ecological footprint.
Choose one answer.
Reduce fits the idea of making your environmental impact smaller. Expand would mean making it larger, measure is what scientists do to calculate it, and ignore does not make sense with 'footprint' in this context.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “ecological footprint”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.