Electric vehicles are currently touted as the most eco-friendly way to get from A to B. But what's the truth behind their supposedly green credentials? We've taken a closer look at their life cycle to see how they really shape up.

We have all heard about ecological footprints: the demands that each and every one of us makes on the Earth’s ecosystems as we go about our day-to-day lives, not just with cars and air travel, but also by heating our homes, washing our clothes, even eating.

An ecological footprint measures humans' consumption of natural resources against the Earth’s ecological capacity (biocapacity) to regenerate them.

Since the late 1970s, humanity has been in ecological overshoot with annual demand on resources exceeding what Earth can regenerate each year. How does your own ecological footprint shape up?