Today, Thursday 28th July, is an important day – it is Earth Overshoot Day.
Earth or World Overshoot Day is the day in which humanity has used up all of the Earth’s annual ecological resources for the year. In short, we are over budget. That means that starting tomorrow, on Friday, July 29th, our demand for resources will exceed what the Earth can generate in a year. To keep pace, we will effectively require the equivalent of 1.75 Earths to meet existing demands.
Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by dividing the planet’s biocapacity by humanity’s ecological footprint and then multiplying by the 365 days in the year. The calculation is made up of four key factors: how much we consume, how efficiently products are made, population size, and how much our natural ecosystems are able to produce.
A look back.
In 1961, the first year United Nations statistics became available on humanity’s demand on resources had gone from being within the means of what nature could support to significantly over budget. A call to action, the first Earth Overshoot Day was noted in December, 1971. Since the 1970s, Earth Overshoot Day has arrived earlier and earlier, and in 2005, it shifted to July. This means, that despite our budgeting, we are coming up short every year – and, more importantly, shorter every year.
Circle this Day.
Some people consider Earth Overshoot Day to be a call to action for more sustainable resource use. While individuals and companies are all on their own individual sustainability journey, there is no time more critical then today to not just reflect, but to adjust and take action of our resource usage. We encourage companies and individuals alike to get creative and incorporate new ways into everyday life and work streams to reduce the demand on the earth’s resources. Just like the importance of keeping to our budget and not bouncing a check, we need to take action beyond social posts to reduce our natural resource usage.
Integrated into our ethos, as a B Corp, CircleIT continues to adopt new ways to accelerate circularity – with a focus on repurposing, instead of just recycling devices and to reduce the need to mine for additional natural resources. To do this, we work with clients to reduce their environmental impacts associated with Scope 3, and to incorporate circularity principles that reduce the need to draw on raw materials to manufacture new technology. We maintain our own reductions. As of 2021, we became carbon neutral for Scope 1 and 2 for our major facilities. This year we are working to reduce our own Scope 3 footprint.
Let’s take this day as an action day. Together we can #MoveTheDate