Well I don't know about you but I always thought that I'd do quite well on a quiz like this. I recycle my rubbish, rarely use the car (one of the benefits of working from home) and we've installed energy saving light bulbs in our house, amongst many other things. I know I can do more but I at least thought my eco-halo wasn't completely tarnished. So I took this quiz on www.ecofoot.org just to see exactly how green I was. Oh dear…

After completing the 16 simple questions in the quiz I was told that if everyone in the world lived like me then we'd need 4.1 Planet Earths to sustain us all! Still, I was relieved to read that the average ecological footprint for South Africa was 4.3 so at least I'm better than that, not a complete loss then.

The quiz is based on national consumption averages and is meant to give you an idea of your Ecological Footprint relative to other people in the country you live in. It is not highly detailed, but should give most people an idea of where they stand.

What's great about this site is that it really makes you think about the impact our lifestyle choices that we take for granted as being normal and reasonable have on the environment. Yes we all know that we could drive a little less, buy more fuel efficient cars, recycle our rubbish, eat locally grown organic produce etc but I think all too often we take the simple and easiest choice from what is put in front of us.

What I really like about this website, is that after completing the quiz (and recovering from the shock of the results), further browsing will take you to a very handy 'Take Action Calculator'. This lays out eighteen questions, broken down into the categories of Food, Mobility and Housing, where you have to indicate what your current usage is for each of and what your planned usage is (what difference you're prepared to try and make), hit 'calculate' and it'll tell you exactly how much you'll reduce your footprint by putting your plans into action.

Changing the habits of whole societies is a very challenging objective but one that I think can be achieved by individuals increasingly choosing more sustainable lifestyles. Making knowledge fun and interactive with quizzes like this I think is great way to encourage them to go about trying to do so.

Visit www.ecofoot.org to take the quiz now!