We've used all of the earth's resources for the year...in August

Have you ever had a 💵budget for the month and spent everything within that budget like...half way into the month? Oops. Well that’s okay, we’re only human. We can try again next month!

Picture that, but instead of the whole month it’s a whole year. And instead of budgeting money, we are budgeting the earth’s resources. And we just went over budget for the year...in August.

See, the earth only has so many resources on the planet.⛽️ Some of them are gone forever once they are used, and other resources will replenish themselves naturally, if we allow them to.🚰

What is Earth Overshoot Day?

We as humans have been demanding more resources than the earth can give. This means at some point every single year, we operate in “overshoot”, and this year Earth Overshoot Day was August 22nd.

Which means all of the resources for the year were used up on that date. From here on out we are contributing to an environmental deficit.📈

Now, obviously the earth won’t just magically replenish itself once a new year rolls around. But the idea of Overshoot Day is intended to be a way for us to visually understand how many resources we are using.

It gives us a clear goal to work towards: to #MoveTheDate closer and closer to the end of the year. 🗓

It was created with The Global Footprint Network which is a research organization dedicated to making the science around sustainability, accessible and absorbable.

Calculate your footprint with them today, just click here!

What can we do to #MoveTheDate?

Well geez, what a bummer. We still have four months to go this year and have already used up all our resources. So should we just give up and try again in January?

You probably already know the answer to that.

HECK NO! While we may be living in a deficit, the fewer resources we use will still reduce it. 

We have so much that we can do to help #MoveTheDate. And many people who enjoy LastObject products have already started. Waste is a very important aspect of conserving resources and it helps establish a mindset that will be needed in other aspects of our lives.

Some other important things we can do are:

• Eat more plant based
• Commute more eco friendly
• Advocate for a more sustainable community
• Be more intentional about the things we bring into our lives
• Advocate and reduce food waste in your community
• Plant wild spaces!

The importance of Earth Overshoot Day

Two things occur when we learn about Earth Overshoot Day. At first, it’s kind of discouraging to learn. I mean think about it: all of our resources are used up by August!😩

But then again, no one has really invented something so easy to visualize and simple to understand. While we have a long way to go in order to push the date closer to January, we actually have a goal now.

And along with that goal, we have multiple ways to get us closer to it.

We have a goal, we know what we need to do to get there, and we also have each other.🤝

We have a community of passionate and like minded people to lift us up, to tear down barriers, and get us to a more sustainable society.

The science of sustainability has been around for years now. And climate change was actually theorized earlier than we would think. Of course science will continue to peel back more and more layers to issues, but something else has also been happening. It is becoming more absorbable to the general public.

Most of us don’t enjoy flipping through page after page of research to hopefully arrive at some new conclusion. We want things that we can understand. Visuals and graphs, or numbers put into terms that we are familiar with. Like a budget or date instead of say...tonnes of carbon, whatever that means.🤷🏻‍♂️

That is exactly what Earth Overshoot Day is. It’s a way for us to better recognize our impact and see just how many resources we are gobbling up.

So let’s take advantage of this brilliant and accessible information to truly make an impact. If everyone tried to #MoveTheDate in the world, we would see so much progress.

And even if two people tried, that would be more than before. So let’s start.