Eco Footprint - Waffle Explains It All (Patreon)

Eco Footprint was introduced with Eco Lifestyle and refers to the process of modifying, and the state of, your neighborhood's pollution status. You can view the current status by clicking the icon on the World Map screen which will show each Neighborhood's state.

There are 3 states of Eco Footprint: Green, Neutral, and Industrial. The state can be seen at the bottom of the screen in Live Mode next to the Clock. It adjusts slowly based on two major factors: The Footprint of the Lot, and the Footprint of the "Street".

Sims 4 tuning uses "Street" to refer to the neighborhood a lot is on. When your neighborhood has a certain NAP active, it is applied to the "Street". Same goes for Eco Footprint.

Both Your Lot and the Street have their own "Commodity" (what I usually refer to as a "hidden motive") for Eco Footprint and can be distinct from each other. If every other lot in the neighborhood is Industrial, their motive is trending towards Industrial- but if your lot is fighting back with lots of Green behaviors, your Lot motive is trending towards Green. The two are combined to decide which direction the Footprint should be going at any given time. This does mean that inactive lots on the same street affect the eco footprint, which is why changing it can be very difficult. If the other lots aren't impacting it either direction, your Lot will have a lot more power over it. But if they're trending it one way or the other, your Lot has to do a lot more to make an impact. This system seems to be designed with the assumption the Player is using multiple lots on any given street, which I feel is a bit unrealistic to expect.

But what actually alters Eco Footprint? How does a Lot decide if it's Green or Industrial?

Two of the Lot traits with Eco Lifestyle directly impact Footprint: Eco Lot, and Landfill Lot. Eco Lot will multiply the rate of change towards Green Footprint by 10%, per lot in the neighborhood that has the trait. Landfill Lot will multiply the rate of change towards Industrial Footprint by 20%, per lot in the neighborhood that has the trait. Landfill Lots also randomly generate trash, including trash that can be upcycled (old furniture).

Additionally, in Evergreen Harbor, each of the Modern Civic Policies you can vote for boost Green Footprint rate by 300%!

(There's also the Reduce and Recycle Lot Trait, which makes Outdoor Trash Bins no longer infinite voids. They can fill up and require emptying by the City every week! If you produce too much trash and don't have enough cans your trash can spill over, which will impact footprint! Dumpsters can produce flies, which can be helpful...or deadly! You can also get flies in general gameplay with my mod, Death by Flies!)

There are two ways to modify Footprint on the lots themselves: USING items, and PLACING items. The mere existence of a number of objects will increase your Lot's trend towards either footprint state. Here are some examples:

Trend Towards Industrial, simply by existing:

• Most Appliances and Plumbing, if not upgraded to be eco-friendly

• Lights, when turned on

• Dirty Animal Enclosures

• Trash Plants

Trend Towards Industrial, by using:

• Any and all Fireworks

• Most Appliances and Plumbing, if Upgraded to use Fuel Cells or H20 Siphoners- This includes cooking, using the toilet, running electronics, etc.

• All bonfires and campfires, including the fire under the Magic Cauldron!

• Burning Leaf Piles, and it's even worse if they're burning strong

Trend Towards Green, simply by existing:

• All non-trash Plants that are currently Blooming, including Giant Crops and Cowplants. Plants will also trend when not blooming, but not as strongly.

• Most Appliances and plumbing, when upgraded to be Eco-Friendly

• The Solar Water Heater from For Rent

• Functioning Wind Turbines and Dew Collectors

Trend Towards Green, simply by using:

• Most interactions for Appliances and plumbing, when upgraded to be Eco-Friendly- This includes cooking, using the toilet, running electronics, etc.

Special Cases:

• Lots get a huge boost towards Green when an Active Sim on the lot has the "Eco Lifestyle! Eureka!" buff from speaking to an Eco Master and learning about the Eco Footprint process

• Civil Designers can unlock a Smog Vacuum which can suck smog from the air, or add it back, which trends the footprint in the selected direction

• Using the Weather Controller from Seasons will trend the lot closer to green every single time it's used, for any purpose (Which seems...backwards IMO)

• Using the Rocket Ship adjusts the value for the entire street, not just your lot!

• Changing non-cloth diapers does a teeny tiny little change every single time. No, I'm not joking.

There are a few additional goofy things to note. The Fuel Cell upgrade for objects makes them use a refillable fuel cell that needs to be maintained, either with fuel or with insect biofuel. Either way, the rate at which the Fuel cell depletes is actually dependent on the Eco Footprint. Industrial eco footprints make it deplete slower, while Green and Neutral footprints make it deplete faster. Additionally, the Eco Master may try to siphon smog away from Industrial areas which can benefit them for a time, but it'll continue to trend back to Industrial if improvements aren't made to the entire Street.

In the buy mode catalog you can see an item's eco footprint trend. It's usually Industrial for electronics, plumbing, and appliances. If it uses Electricity or Water, it's Industrial. These can be altered with upgrades- they can be even worse for the environment, or better, with various effects, usually for your bills.

In a general sense, the Eco Footprint is a hidden stat that changes when you do things that logically would impact it. The game stores this information and uses it for the "other lots" on the "Street" when you're on a different lot, and that value it saved changes how fast it'll change while on your current lot doing your own things. In this sense, you can theoretically build multiple lots in a neighborhood drowning in electronics and lights and move a sim in and play for a few minutes with everything in use, save, and now that lot will- until modified in some way- become a permanent detriment to the overall "Street" level of the hidden footprint motive. You can do the same to make all the lots more green. Place a ton of harvestable plants on a lot and remove or upgrade the appliances, and it'll become "green", and make the street greener.

But what does Eco Footprint actually do?

Green:

• Gives Sims a hidden buff that makes them bask in the sun and breathe deeply to enjoy the fresh air. Basking in the Sun can sometimes result in a "Burnt" moodlet from how bright the sun is in the area, but also gives a positive Praise the Sun moodlet. It can influence Sims to have a Discovery Moment re: the environment. See my Discovery Moment explanation for more info on how this works.

• Makes Collectibles from Digging, Excavating (Yes, from Jungle Adventure), and Werewolf Scavenging higher quality. This is equivalent to giving every sim the "Collector" trait, which means they only get the better results.

• Creates visible Sun Rays during the day.

• Makes Plants grow faster (IN THEORY!!! This is currently tuned incorrectly, and does the opposite! You need my mod to fix this!)

Industrial:

• Gives Sims a hidden buff that makes them cough.

• Gives eco-friendly Sims upset buffs

• Makes the "Fresh Air" buffs from sims who Love the Outdoors and are enjoying a bike ride impossible to get

• Makes fires burn out slower, and stay stronger longer

• Makes Battery upgraded objects need new Fuel Cells more often

• Turns Rain into Acid Rain, which Sims are NOT comfortable being outside in!

• Adds smog to the environment during most weathers

• Vampire Powers are reduced in strength

• Werewolves have trouble Howling

• Makes Plants grow slower (IN THEORY!!! This is currently tuned incorrectly, and does the opposite! You need my mod to fix this!)

I'm not ENTIRELY sure why you'd want an area to be Industrial. But- the visual effects for an Industrial footprint are STAGGERING. The water changes color, the sky changes color, the entire color tone of the area seems wrong, there's visible smog blocking your view, the rain becomes green and acidic- it completely changes the vibe. Green Eco Footprint will make things brighter and visibly greener and bluer. But Industrial is a completely different world, and can totally change how an area feels.

A few minor notes:

• Parks always start off as Green!

• Tomarang is the only world in the game where every lot starts as Green without player input.

• I can't find evidence for this, but supposedly Fires start more easily in Industrial environments. I do not believe this is accurate...but I see it reported in a few places. I think this may be a misunderstanding of the "Industrial Areas make fires burn more" thing mentioned above.

• WINDY Days produce more power from Wind Turbines.

• CLOUDY Days produce less power from Solar Panels.

• RAINY Days produce more water from Dew Collectors.

• There may be additional factors for Footprint that I cannot see or find, this data may not be exhaustive. I did not list every single thing that can change it, either- there are surely a few interactions not mentioned.

• Eco Footprint does not seem to affect Animals.

• Spellcasters can use spells to reduce smog

• Insect Farms can be used for Biofuel for the Fuel Cell upgrade, which is the environmentally friendly way to use it. However, using Insect Farms alone is not considered a green act. Animals in general do not contribute to Eco Footprint aside from the cleanliness of their enclosures.

On its own Eco Footprint mostly only plays into the rate of plant growth and a few buffs on Sims. 

The larger point of it is to play more into Off-The-Grid and Self-Sufficiency gameplay- the easiest self-sufficiency off the grid comes from polluting, and the hardest comes from doing the work and getting your utilities sorted cleanly. Essentially, Industrial footprint is a punishment for playing Off the Grid poorly, or for being superfluous with your environment.

Unfortunately the Street system makes this hard to actually experience naturally unless you're really trying to force it to happen. Because of the way all of this is tuned- individually on the objects/interactions in most cases- it's difficult to adjust this with a mod, maybe...I have not looked into it, but am interested in doing so.

There are cheats you can use to adjust your neighborhood footprint. Note, however, that the "trend" I explained at the start of this page will persist even if you adjust the footprint. They'll probably go back to neutral eventually. But it can be fun to cheat an area Industrial and try to make it green! I cheat to see the Industrial effects on a world every time a new Expansion comes out. It's one of my favorite things to see about new worlds.

With Testing Cheats enabled,

Eco_Footprint.Set_Eco_Footprint_State 0

Eco_Footprint.Set_Eco_Footprint_State 1

Eco_Footprint.Set_Eco_Footprint_State 2

Will set the footprint for the current Neighborhood to Green, Neutral, and Industrial, respectively.

Eco Lifestyle is generally considered something of a "nothing" expansion by a lot of people, but I think this feature alone proves how rich The Sims 4 content can be even if it doesn't seem so on a surface level. This is a big, big system- and it's cross-pack, too- yet it's only one small part of a pack that also involves Neighborhood Action Plans, Fabrication, Candle Making, Juice Fizzing, a special venue with 4 different states of existence, a new career, a world that can change visually, self-sufficiency and bill-reduction gameplay, upcycling furniture, dumpster diving, trash buildup and collection (when the Reduce and Recycle lot trait is applied), hydroponic gardens, recycling, and a new Freelance career. And Knox Greenburg.

I hope this information makes the pack seem richer and more interesting!

NOTE TO CONTENT CREATORS: I write these posts on my own time, using my own research into mechanics, using my own ability to understand tuning and navigate through it to find what it does, where, and how. If you use this information for any purposes, such as making videos about game mechanics, please, please, please, credit me and link to these posts as the source. I know for a fact content already exists where I am the source and not credited.

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