Melih ada Atlhan

21001123
1st Assignment- Interview on Ecological Footprint

Interviewee: Mehmet (73) - My Grandfather

Covering the years between 1945-1965
04/10/2015
10 Minutes of interview on telephone

Interview will take a place after a brief reflection regarding the results of ecological
footprint calculator.

Results have displayed that if everyone lived the same lifestyle as me, it will cost the
regenerative capacity of 1.7 planets each year which is 0.1 global hectares below the world avarage
biocapacity. While comparing to other nations, it is observable that my footprint is less harmful than
the avarage of developed countries such as UK and Italy, however, it almost doubled the avarage
footprint of India. Reflection of these results should include the fact that industrialized and
relatively rich countries are the main sources of challenges against sustainability. Components of
my footprint is mostly related to energy land and cropland in order to store my carbon emission and
food. Inevitably, energy is the most significant component of my footprint due to several reasons.
As a city-dweller, it is not that easy to choose renewable energy while living in a flat which mostly
depends on fossile sources of energy. On the other hand, it can be possible to change my regular
diet into tolerable levels for me and my planet.

To proceed, following interview with my grandfather highlights crucial changes between of

lifestyles of two generations in the context of ecological sustainability and integration to the
environment.

Q-1) In today's Turkey it is almost impossible to find potable water from tap. All people
buy water from private companies that deliver water to houses. And most importantly, tap
water may cause health problems due to its pollution. I wonder what the situation was back in
your days? From where you used to obtain potable water? Were you able to drink water from
tap?
Well i spend my childhood in a small village in the north part of Turkey where we have no
taps inside the houses but rather we have water-well outside the houses. Not every house had a
water-well but couple of houses share the same water-well. Those wells were fairly enough to
suffice our needs; water to drink, water to wash clother, water to clean ourselves etc. In those times
we did not have the difference between potable and nonpotable water. All those wells considered to
be clean and drinkable. And I have never heard of someone gets sick due to the water coming from
wells. The water we used to have back then, in my opinion, was the cleanest water. When me and
my family moved to Ankara, I experienced taps inside the apartments so that we no longer need to
go outside the house and carry tons of water to shower or to cook. This was a great improvment in
our personal lives however I always miss the water I used to drink in our small village. In those
days, I knew the river where the water came from. I was able to see it and thus trust it. But in big
city, I am never be sure where the water comes from. But yet we were still able to drink tap water in
those days until 2000's. Couple of years ago there were lots of news on TV saying that Ankara's
water is making people sick. Well to be honest I personally did experienced such an illness. After
these news we also started to buy water from private companies. It is not bad water we buy from
these companies however we still use tap water to wash fruits and vegetables. But in order not to
get sick, my wife adds vinegar to water while she washes the vegetables. We do not trust the tap

water and can not drink it. There are still some rare news on TV showing people get ill due to the
tap water. I think these news reduced because people learned not to drink it, not because it gets
better.
Q-2) What kind of energy sources did you use to utilize for heating, transportation and
catering?
For heating, we used to have one stove in the living room and no heating equipments in
other rooms. We mostly use wood and manure of cows for heating. Manure produces good heat but
it smells bad, I must say. For catering, we had one big chimney outside the house to which we
supply fire by woods and manure similarly. We generally did not use manure for chimney due to its
smell. For transportation, we did not have a car until 1960s. Before that we mainly walk to
everywhere in the village. When we had to travel to city center or to some other city we took big
buses or train.
Q-3) As a last question, to what extent did you suffer from the amount of domestic
waste ? How did you get rid of your organic or inorganic wastes (detergent, chemicals etc...) ?
I should first say that back in those days we did not have so much garbages like today. When we eat
something, we used to utilize it as much as we can. For example if my mother were to cook
chicken, she always cooked its meats and uses its bones to make soup so that we have barely no
garbage after it. For fruits and vegetables, we did the same and tried to eat it as much as possible
and the rest we gave it to animals we had in our barn; cows, chickens, couple of dogs. We did not
have packaged products; we produced our own milk and from it our own cheese and yoghurt. As we
did not have packages, we almost never had plastic garbages. We only new soap as cleaner and it
was not possible to use it daily. I don't know anything about what kind of wastes we had but I have
never heard any problem or any conversation saying what will we do with these garbages?.
Because, we were not producing that much of harmful objects.

To compare, the major difference arises in terms of integrity with environment, It is clearly
observed that migration from rural to urban increased the size of our footprint due to several
reasons. First, false conscious on progress caused a shift in our lifestyles and broke human's natural
ties with environment. For instance, we no longer utilize animals as units of transportation or we do
not have distances to walk in modern cities. Instead, we depend on cars and machines that use
carbon based fuels emitting dangerous gases for living organisms and atmosphere. Another
significant topic is water being used in those years. As a fact, our civilization was built around
rivers and accessing fresh water is at the core of our past and future. We can easily state that a few
decades ago there were no difference among water since the sole source was natural sources such as
rivers and lakes. Although it is not one of the components of ecological footprint, the amount and
quality of water is a sign of pollution at massive scale. One may bring water treatment and
purification plants as solution, yet, there is no future guarantee of preserving water clean when we
experience possible acid rains or atmospheric crisis.

Interview have proven that changing habitats and conjuncture forced people to enlarge their
ecological footsteps. Two generations lived in same city differ greatly in affecting the world since
individuals of modern ages enjoys vehicles, luxury or technology at the expense of environment.
From a personal perspective, what really matters are the companies and governments that condone
upcoming environemental crisis in order to increase their profit and maintain their established order.
This interview displayed that humans are less likely to harm environment whilst living in their
natural settings. (in villages for example). There is no doubt that individuals should have the
consciousness recognizing themselves as a part of this globe. However, companies and states can
control every ecological footprint on earth by practicing a collective effort to prevent an
environmental catastrophe.