footprint

carbon footprint – sostantivo numerabile

digital footprint – sostantivo numerabile

ecological/environmental footprint – sostantivo numerabile

 

What’s your carbon footprint? Use The Nature Conservancy’s carbon footprint calculator to measure your impact on our climate.

While it’s not possible to have ZERO footprints, the first steps toward reducing your digital footprint and managing your digital identity are not that hard.

Take this quiz to find out your Ecological Footprint, discover your biggest areas of resource consumption, and learn what you can do to tread more lightly on the earth.

A common type of footprint estimates the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes.

 

Quando Robinson Crusoe vide un’orma sulla spiaggia, che sapeva di non aver lasciato, ebbe la certezza che sull’isola c’era un altro essere umano. E come Venerdì, che lasciò tracce della sua presenza sulla sabbia, anche noi lasciamo ovunque tracce delle nostre attività. Dunque digital footprint (le tracce digitali) sono tutte le nostre informazioni personali che esistono su internet, dalle foto dell’album di famiglia ai siti che abbiamo visitato e ai tweet e ai post preferiti. Con ecological o environmental footprint (l’impronta ecologica o ambientale) s’intende l’impatto che ciascuno di noi ha sull’ambiente e con carbon footprint (impronta carbonica) la quantità di CO² immessa nell’atmosfera in conseguenza delle nostre attività. Le emissioni di anidride carbonica sono senz’altro quelle più monitorate e misurate ma esistono anche altri indicatori, ad esempio water footprint (l’impronta idrica), land use footprint (l’impronta territoriale) eccetera.

 

Origini del termine

 

Il termine ecological footprint si deve a Mathis Wackernagel e William Rees, che l’introdussero negli anni ’90 nell’ambito di un più generale dibattito sull’impatto dell’uomo sul pianeta e sulle risorse naturali. Pare che Rees l’abbia coniato dopo aver sentito un tecnico lodare il suo nuovo computer perché aveva lasciato “una piccola impronta sulla scrivania”.

carbon footprint – countable noun

digital footprint – countable noun

ecological/environmental footprint – countable noun

 

What’s your carbon footprint? Use The Nature Conservancy’s carbon footprint calculator to measure your impact on our climate.

While it’s not possible to have ZERO footprints, the first steps toward reducing your digital footprint and managing your digital identity are not that hard.

Take this quiz to find out your Ecological Footprint, discover your biggest areas of resource consumption, and learn what you can do to tread more lightly on the earth.

A common type of footprint estimates the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes.

 

When Robinson Crusoe saw a footprint on the beach that he knew he had not made himself, it was a sure sign that there was another human being on the island. Just as Friday left a trace of his presence in the sand, so we in our very different age leave traces of our activity wherever we go. So your digital footprint is all the information about you that exists on the Internet, from that unfortunate Halloween party photo taken when you were 17 to the websites you have visited or the tweets and posts you have favourited. Your ecological or environmental footprint is the overall impact you have on the environment, while your carbon footprint is the amount of CO² released into the atmosphere as a result of your activities. While carbon emissions are by far the most frequently measured item, there are other measures for other uses, the water footprint, land use footprint and so on.

 

Origins

 

The term ecological footprint was introduced in the 1990s by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees as part of the discussion about man’s impact on the planet and its resources. Rees came up with the phrase after hearing a computer technician praising his new computer’s “small footprint on the desk”.

WordWatch è l'osservatorio sui neologismi della lingua inglese curato dalla redazione del dizionario Ragazzini.

A cura di Liz Potter