Today, July 29, is Earth Overshoot Day. It’s a critically important day for everyone interested in advancing food waste reduction and ensuring a sustainable future.
Earth Overshoot Day represents the point in the year where humanity’s demand for ecological resources (our collective ecological footprint) exceeds the Earth’s ability to supply them (biocapacity). The Global Footprint Network maintains the annual calculation of Earth Overshoot which has, unfortunately, been moving steadily forward (i.e. earlier in the calendar) over time. In 1989, for example, Earth Overshoot Day fell on October 11, while this year it is occurring more than two months earlier, the earliest, in fact, it’s ever fallen. That movement – more than two months in just 20 years -- is cause for great concern because it indicates the accelerated rate at which we are taxing our planet’s finite resources. It isn’t sustainable.