Earth Overshoot Day is the day on which the official depletion of renewable natural resources occurs: human demand exceeds what the Earth is capable of generating for the current year.

By this term, the Global Footprint Network, a non-profit that develops tools to promote sustainability, designates the day of the year from which each country and the Planet as a whole begins to accumulate new ecological debt.

How is this day calculated?
Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by dividing the planet’s biocapacity, which is the amount of ecological resources the Earth is able to generate that year, by humanity’s ecological footprint, which is humanity’s demand for that year, and multiplying by the number of days in a year.

In 2023, Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 2;
Italy declared Overshoot Day on May 15.
It is estimated that proceeding at this rate around 2050 humanity will consume as much as twice as much as the Earth produces.

From the calculation made, Italy is estimated to declare Overshoot Day on May 19, 2024.

Not all countries, however, have an overshoot day. If a country’s per capita Ecological Footprint is less than the global biocapacity per capita (1.5 gha), then the world would not exhaust the entire year’s regenerative resource budget within a year if all of humanity lived as they do.

Climate change and environmental impacts are increasingly evident, so it is time to take concrete actions to mitigate these effects.