Earth Overshoot Day: What it means and how it's moved

 

Hellofriendly readers and welcome to an info article on Earth Overshoot Day! In thisarticle, I talk about 2025's Earth Overshoot Day, what this means, and thetrends in global material use over time.

 

 

Whatis Earth Overshoot Day?

 

Firstly,let's dive into what an Overshoot Day even is. In order to understand it, let'sthink of the Earth for a moment as a wallet. This wallet has a finite amount ofchange in it, some notes etc and that's what we get to spend in a year, so in asustainable world, we would count that change and budget it throughout theentire year.

 

EarthOvershoot Day represents the point in a year where we get to the end of what wehave in the wallet, and in essence we start using what is beyond ourbudget, representing a deficit. Now the actual Overshoot day is not economic atall, it is based on the 'biocapacity'of the planet, which is what our ecosystems and natural environments cansupply. So when we reach our Overshoot day we have used up all the naturalresources etc we should have been stretching out across an entire year, andafter this date we are now borrowing biocapacity- which could have long termnegative consequences.

 

Theearlier and earlier the Earth Overshoot Day in a year is, the quicker we areusing our allocated natural resources and depleting future supply.

 

Whatis the 2025 status looking like?

 

So,there are multiple ways you can look at the Overshoot Day, one being the globalaverage of us all. This year, we reached Earth Overshoot Day on July24th, which means we used an entire year's worth of resources in just overhalf the year, and for the rest of the year we are borrowing resources andproduce from what our future selves could have depended on.

 

ThePopulation Matters organisation gives a few good examples of the cause/impactsassociated with this- highlighting that in the last half a century, ourresource use has tripled, with the worlds population growing to its current 8billion population.This can mean that we use resources in a way that will hinder futurepopulations, for example by cutting trees down at a faster rate than they cangrow back, or harming sea beds so there aren't enough fish to repopulate forfuture generations effectively.

 

However,beyond the global Overshoot Day, there are also Country Overshoot days whichbreak this concept down further.These produce the same result (i.e. an understanding of how quickly we aredepleting ecological supply) but based on the actions of a country's population.In 2025, the earliest Country Overshoot Day was allocated to Qatar, at just February 6th, followed by Luxembourg at Feb 17th, andSingapore at Feb 26th.

 

Infact, only 27 of the total 86 countries analysed made it past July 2nd fortheir individual overshoot days, and only 1 made it to December.This diagram below demonstrates the County Overshoot days: 

 

(Photocredit to Global Footprint Network 2025, www.overshootday.org and www.footprintnetwork.org)

 

Howhas this changed?

 

Now,the Earth Overshoot Calculation site points out that there is a very importantconsideration when comparing historical results to present ones: the change indata availability and how this influences calculations.The group publishes a table to compare how country Overshoot Days have changedbecause of data compared to consumption.

 

Intheir comparison, 34 of the 86 countries had earlier Overshoot Days recordedthan last year based on consumption changes, though this was compared to also34 countries which had later Overshoot Days recorded due to consumption (with 18 countries experiencing no change).

 

Whilstthese numbers look relatively good in the sense that they're not getting worseit is worth noting that overall, if you take the sum of all the days movedearlier and later due to consumption changes, we have moved 48 days earliercompared to last year,because those 34 countries that have consumed more, have moved their OvershootDays a total of 116 days earlier, compared to a shift of 68 days later fromthose countries that have consumed less.

 

Donote, this is not taking into account changes due to the amount of data we nowhave available, this is a separate set of data to consider!

 

Sowhat does this mean?

 

Well,a quick way of saying this entire article would be to say that we are consumingmore resources than we should, and it's not got better compared to lastyear,  but if you made it all the way tothe end then- like me- you were curious to see the numbers and how theyinfluence our performance too (or you had nothing better to do, in which case go ahead and explore the restof my site for more interesting Earth News).

 

Ifyou're dismayed by this, fear not, because I also have some other articles inwhich I look at how to shop or have a few more sustainable habits here:

 

How to commute to uni without the negative impacts.Ways to keep sustainable when you have little controlA sustainable way to get through exams A look at sustainable student shopping, is it possible? 

However,if you have something you'd like to learn some more about, feel free to leave acomment and I will have a research!

 

(Feel free to check out my other environmental articles here!) 

 

That's all from this Mischief Weaver. :) 

 

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