Our human activities consume resources and produce waste And nature needs to have the capacity to meet these demands The ecological footprint is a way to measure our human demand on nature Every one of us has an ecological footprint. The footprint represents the impact of a person a household, a city, a business or a country on nature Things like food, energy, transportation, goods & services all contribute to our ecological footprint. The footprint is expressed as the amount of land and water required to produce what we consume and to absorb the waste we generate. By measuring the ecological footprint we can assess the pressure our lifestyle puts on the planet This helps us to manage our ecological assets more wisely and to take personal and collective action.