Earth Overshoot Day 2024: How to Make the Best of This Important Benchmark

Each World Environment Day, experts choose the planet's next Earth Overshoot Day. This day marks the date that experts believe humans will use more assets than the Earth has to provide for the year. Scientists take a lot of different factors into consideration when coming up with this somber milestone, including what this means for the world's resources.

Below you can read more about the origins of Earth Overshoot Day, including how you can observe its significance during the 2024 event.

Earth Overshoot Day is determined by the Global Footprint Network, a research organization which uses different statistics and calculations to determine the new date each year. Some of this data is provided by global thought leaders from the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, FoDaFo, and York University.

Things like the number of days in the year, the world's current ecological footprint, and the number of ecological resources that remain accessible to humans in a given year are all entered into the equation: Earth’s Biocapacity / Humanity’s Ecological Footprint) x 365 = Earth Overshoot Day.

Because 2024 was a Leap Year, the number of years used in the calculation was 366, which put Earth Overshoot Day on Aug. 1, 2024. That means that the date the planet's resources will be outpaced by its needs will occur five months short of the end of the year. Past Earth Overshoot Days have varied slightly in timing in recent history but have all occurred mid to late-summer, according to the Geneva Environment Network:

• 2023: Aug. 2
• 2022: July 28
• 2021: July 29
• 2020: Aug. 22.

Because of the serious nature of this date, many people opt to observe Earth Overshoot Day by making more sustainable choices when it comes to production and consumption, which include boycotting items that are made from products that contribute to deforestation (like palm oil), making swaps at the grocery store that allow consumers to support business that uses fewer resources, and even giving up meat and foods made from animal byproducts for the day (or longer).

If you're interested, you can learn more about adopting a more sustainable lifestyle by reading this guide, which explains how you can not only get started, but how you can develop habits that you'll actually be able to keep up with in the long run!

Much like the infamous Doomsday Clock, Earth Overshoot Day forces humanity to look at the way we exist on this planet and whether or not the human population can be sustained in the long run. While it's a sobering (and sometimes scary) reality check, it's an entirely necessary one if we want to start pushing these dates further back on the calendar.

Although some experts say we've already passed the point of no return, I can't see any harm in at least trying to do your best to live a more sustainable life, not just on Earth Overshoot Day, but every day.