Hello friendly readers and welcome to an info article on Earth Overshoot Day! In this article, I talk about 2025's Earth Overshoot Day, what this means, and the trends in global material use over time.
What is Earth Overshoot Day?
Firstly, let's dive into what an Overshoot Day even is. In order to understand it, let's think of the Earth for a moment as a wallet. This wallet has a finite amount of change in it, some notes etc and that's what we get to spend in a year, so in a sustainable world, we would count that change and budget it throughout the entire year.
Earth Overshoot Day represents the point in a year where we get to the end of what we have in the wallet, and in essence we start using what is beyond our budget, representing a deficit. Now the actual Overshoot day is not economic at all, it is based on the 'biocapacity' of the planet, which is what our ecosystems and natural environments can supply. So when we reach our Overshoot day we have used up all the natural resources etc we should have been stretching out across an entire year, and after this date we are now borrowing biocapacity- which could have long term negative consequences.
The earlier and earlier the Earth Overshoot Day in a year is, the quicker we are using our allocated natural resources and depleting future supply.
What is the 2025 status looking like?
So, there are multiple ways you can look at the Overshoot Day, one being the global average of us all. This year, we reached Earth Overshoot Day on July 24th, which means we used an entire year's worth of resources in just over half the year, and for the rest of the year we are borrowing resources and produce from what our future selves could have depended on.
The Population Matters organisation gives a few good examples of the cause/impacts associated with this- highlighting that in the last half a century, our resource use has tripled, with the worlds population growing to its current 8 billion population. This can mean that we use resources in a way that will hinder future populations, for example by cutting trees down at a faster rate than they can grow back, or harming sea beds so there aren't enough fish to repopulate for future generations effectively.
However, beyond the global Overshoot Day, there are also Country Overshoot days which break this concept down further. These produce the same result (i.e. an understanding of how quickly we are depleting 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, and Singapore at Feb 26th.
In fact, only 27 of the total 86 countries analysed made it past July 2nd for their individual overshoot days, and only 1 made it to December. This diagram below demonstrates the County Overshoot days:
(Photo credit to Global Footprint Network 2025, www.overshootday.org and www.footprintnetwork.org)
How has this changed?
Now, the Earth Overshoot Calculation site points out that there is a very important consideration when comparing historical results to present ones: the change in data availability and how this influences calculations. The group publishes a table to compare how country Overshoot Days have changed because of data compared to consumption.
In their comparison, 34 of the 86 countries had earlier Overshoot Days recorded than last year based on consumption changes, though this was compared to also 34 countries which had later Overshoot Days recorded due to consumption (with 18 countries experiencing no change).
Whilst these numbers look relatively good in the sense that they're not getting worse it is worth noting that overall, if you take the sum of all the days moved earlier and later due to consumption changes, we have moved 48 days earlier compared to last year, because those 34 countries that have consumed more, have moved their Overshoot Days a total of 116 days earlier, compared to a shift of 68 days later from those countries that have consumed less.
Do note, this is not taking into account changes due to the amount of data we now have available, this is a separate set of data to consider!
So what does this mean?
Well, a quick way of saying this entire article would be to say that we are consuming more resources than we should, and it's not got better compared to last year, but if you made it all the way to the end then- like me- you were curious to see the numbers and how they influence our performance too (or you had nothing better to do, in which case go ahead and explore the rest of my site for more interesting Earth News).
If you're dismayed by this, fear not, because I also have some other articles in which 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 control
- A 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 a comment 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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