Earth Overshoot Day 2022

Defined by Overshootday.org, “The purpose of this day is to illustrate the calendar date on which humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year.” This year that date falls on July 28th, leaving 156 days in the year overshot.  

So what can we do at this point in the game? 

The answer is everything we can, beginning with getting educated (calculate your ecological footprint). Our actions radiate outward like ripples in water, moving past our surroundings and into systems and places we have no idea about. Tossing that overripe banana may register as wasting a piece of fruit, but a long chain of energy and resources brought that banana to you. It had to be grown, watered, and (most likely) fertilized with pesticides running into the ground and nearby water, affecting ecosystems. Extra bananas had to be grown to account for the high loss due to damage during long transports from distant places. Transportation across such distances means refrigerated trucks and storage containers. When they finally reach the grocery store, only the best-looking specimens are selected, with the rest shipped to landfills overseas. And, though it seems like produce always rots away when trapped without oxygen in these enormous landfills, it can take up to seven years for a head of lettuce to break down. 

Sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it? 

While that’s true, the beauty of this equation is the overall effect we can have by making one simple change that radiates outward in so many directions, how we get our produce.