Abstract: China's iron and steel industry is facing high energy/water consumption with highly increasing waste and heavy pollution. It has become one of the industries that form the most serious environmental pollution. The ecological footprint as research method is thus introduced into the problem to discuss the way of how to save resources and improve environmental efficiency. The results show that the ecological footprint per 10?000?t steel tends to decrease now, but the ecological footprint increases greatly at high speed because of the rapid growth of steel production. The key part of the ecological footprint in steel industry is the indirectly occupied land area by the energy consumed (amounted to over 99% of the whole iron and steel industry). So the key to reduce the ecological footprint of iron and steel industry is to further reduce the energy consumption so as to reduce pollution. However, in recent years the water footprint was on fast decline in steel industry, reduced sewage emissions, and achieved certain results.