I was listening to Marketplace on public radio the other day and as part of their sustainability news series, the reporter plugged an interactive assessment tool called “Consumer Consequences” on American Public Media’s website.

Consumer Consequences will tell you how many planets it would take to support your lifestyle on a planetary scale and provide some ideas for making your footprint a little smaller.

So I thought, well, I’m by no means as green as I would like to be, but I’m making some changes. I recycle everything I can, I drive a fuel-efficient car, and I do various things to save energy—my impact can’t be that bad… Boy was I wrong! Even with a conscious effort to make sustainability a part of my every day life choices, if everyone lived as I do now, we would blow through 5.8 earths… That’s a scary thought! It just reaffirmed that we all need to pay a LOT more attention to the way we are living, and I need to “step up” my goals for reducing my own impact on this earth.

Try it for yourself here.