Global trends suggest that our species is impaired by an inherent inability to follow the imperatives of sustainability and to address the challenges of its ecological overshoot.

The ecological footprint concept has shown considerable promise to help mitigate this impairment by providing a straightforward conceptual tool to communicate to a wide audience what sustainability means for individuals, families, communities, countries and humanity.

This paper examines the pedagogical merits of the footprint concept and provides an overview for optimising its benefits for sustainability education at all age levels. The popularity of the concept among educators is partly explained by its dual character as a scientific model and a normative tool. While its scientific strengths have been amply popularised through websites and interactive exercises, its potential for value education remains less recognised. This seems unfortunate as the transition to sustainable living hinges primarily on changes in moral norms. At the same time, most official curricula are not designed to accomplish those changes. Accordingly, another focus point of the paper is the use of the footprint concept to pursue those affective learning outcomes (values, attitudes, interests, ideals, motivations) that would enable learners to adopt sustainable practices.