Earth Overshoot Day 2025
#CloseTheGap to #MoveTheDate
What is Earth Overshoot Day?
Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources exceeds what Earth can regenerate that year. From that point on, we begin consuming on ecological credit, deepening climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and global inequality.
In 2025, Earth Overshoot Day is going to fall on 24th July. Each year, this date is arriving earlier and earlier. In 1971, it was 25 December. In 2024, it was 1 August. The earlier the date, the greater the ecological strain.
Thinking circular to tackle Earth Overshoot Day
Earth Overshoot Day is more than a calendar event – it’s a snapshot of our growing ecological deficit. Each day past this mark means we’re using resources we can’t replenish. This leads to loss of biodiversity, heightened climate risks, and increased global inequality and conflict over resources
But there’s hope. By changing our economic approaches from linear to circular, we can reduce our reliance on virgin resource, and ‘design out waste’, helping to push back Earth Overshoot Day. This means less pressure on ecosystems and a healthier planet for all.
Circular solutions aren’t hypothetical, they’re operational. Businesses can design circular supply chains, use secondary materials, embed take-back schemes, and invest in recyclability assessments. These are not future ambitions, but present-day capabilities.
Reconomy’s role: Making circularity accessible
At Reconomy, we don’t just enable circularity, we operationalise it. We embed circular thinking into every stage of the value chain, turning intention into action.
We work across sectors and global supply chains to provide the technology, insight, and service delivery needed to make circularity accessible, scalable, and commercially effective. From reducing CO₂ emissions in transport networks, minimising and reusing packaging for retailers, recycling construction waste, to navigating complex international compliance laws, we close gaps others can’t.
The Circularity Gap: The space between now and next
The circularity gap is the difference between the world we have and the one we could have, a future where waste is not created in the first place.
Globally, only 6.9% of materials are cycled back into use each year. That means over 90% of natural resources are wasted, lost, or locked into long-term stock. Closing this gap is our greatest opportunity.
Reconomy is helping to close the gap by:
- Connecting technology with circular solutions
- Helping clients design out waste
- Empowering industries to use secondary materials and embed take-back schemes
Every action counts. Every loop we close moves Earth Overshoot Day further into the future.
Learn about the Circularity GapClose the gap to move the date
The circularity gap represents the divide between our current take-make-waste systems and what is needed for a sustainable, closed-loop model. Closing this gap means transitioning entire industries to operate within planetary boundaries.
At Reconomy, we believe a better future is not only possible, but also achievable. We are committed to closing the circularity gap, helping businesses reduce waste, optimise resources, and embrace circular practices. These small, consistent actions are already making a difference. In 2024, our own efforts contributed to pushing Earth Overshoot Day back by 12 minutes.
‘Close the gap’ is more than a campaign, it’s a movement. It’s a measurable mission and a shared vision: to move businesses from intention to action, from waste to value, and from short-term fixes to long-term circular thinking. By helping our customers close the gap, we’re closing the gap between the world we have and the world we could have.
Our actions today create tomorrow’s impact.
#CloseTheGap: A business-first call-to-action
Reconomy’s #CloseTheGap initiative helps businesses move beyond compliance and sustainability talk into practical circular transformation.
We’re helping organisations to: automate take-back schemes and reuse logistics, improve recyclability assessments, embed data-led compliance with emerging EPR rules, and reduce their circularity gap through smarter supply chains
By helping our customers close the gap, we’re closing the gap between the world we have and the world we could have. By closing the circularity gap, we protect natural resources, allowing them to regenerate and pushing back Earth Overshoot Day.
Understanding Earth Overshoot
Overshoot occurs when consumption outpaces nature’s ability to regenerate. It’s driven by:
- Excessive carbon emissions
- Overfishing and deforestation
- Wasteful production and short product lifecycles
These behaviours create a growing ecological deficit. Even when disruptions like COVID temporarily slowed resource use, the long-term trajectory remains unsustainable.
We face a choice: continue with extractive, linear models, or shift to circular systems that regenerate, reuse, and reduce. This is where businesses can lead.
Since 1971, when Earth Overshoot Day was first recorded on 25th December, it has crept forward nearly every year:
- 2000: Late September
- 2010: Mid-August
- 2020: August 22 (COVID disruption)
- 2024: August 1
- 2025: June 24
This progression highlights a deepening dependence on finite resources. While crises like the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily slowed consumption, the overarching trajectory continues to worsen. Every year, we’re running a growing ecological deficit.
Despite technological advancements and growing awareness, structural change remains slow. The underlying cause is the persistence of the battle of a linear economy vs a circular economy.
(Source: Overshootday.org)
Not all nations consume equally. If everyone lived like:
- The average US citizen – Overshoot Day would fall in March
- The average UK citizen – Around May
- The average Indian citizen – Not until December
This disparity underscores the urgent responsibility for high-consumption countries and their industries to lead change. Large businesses, especially those with global operations, can create the scale needed to implement and replicate effective circular practices across markets.
(Source: Overshootday.org)
The circular economy offers a practical alternative. It reduces environmental impact by designing out waste, keeping materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.
For businesses, embracing circularity delivers:
- Lower input costs
- Landfill reduction
- Supply chain resilience
- Legislative compliance
- Competitive sustainability performance
More importantly, it helps close the gap between consumption and regeneration. Circularity decouples economic growth from resource use, which is key to pushing the Earth Overshoot Date later.
Transitioning to circular models is how we begin to #MoveTheDate.
Understand your impact
Want to know your own Overshoot Day? Use the Global Footprint Calculator to see how your habits affect the planet – and how small changes make a big difference.
This calculator highlights how lifestyle factors, such as diet, housing, energy, and transportation, contribute to the global ecological footprint. It’s a powerful tool to promote individual and corporate accountability.
Use the calculatorFAQs
Explore some of the most frequently asked questions surrounding Earth Overshoot Day
The Global Footprint Network, based on UN and national consumption data.
It reflects humanity’s resource consumption versus Earth’s biocapacity. Earlier dates mean we’re consuming more than ever.
A critical one. Businesses shape supply chains, material use, and consumer behaviour. Circular innovation in logistics, packaging, compliance and design can drive huge reductions in global impact.
Businesses can redesign products for longevity, embed take-back schemes, invest in sustainable packaging, and work with partners like Reconomy to transform their supply chains.
We work across multiple sectors, including retail, logistics, fashion, grocery, construction, consumer electronics, hospitality, and manufacturing.
Global Footprint Network in partnership with the New Economics Foundation. It originally fell on December 25, 1971. Since then, it has crept earlier every year.
At the heart of this issue lies the world’s continued dependence on a linear economy, an outdated model built on extraction, production, consumption, and disposal. This “take-make-waste” system leads to high material extraction rates, short product life cycles, and overwhelming waste production.
As global populations grow and consumption increases, natural resources are being stretched further than ever before. Forests are being cleared faster than they can regrow. Fish are harvested faster than oceans can replenish. Carbon is emitted faster than ecosystems can absorb.
The linear model, while historically effective for industrial growth, is fundamentally unsustainable in the face of environmental limits. The only viable alternative is a transition to a circular economy.
(For more information on this concept, visit our blog post: Linear Economy vs Circular Economy
Circularity is about more than recycling. It’s about designing out waste from the start, using materials more efficiently, and rethinking the very systems by which we produce and consume.
It’s a holistic solution to an entrenched problem, offering not only environmental benefits but also economic resilience and operational efficiency. By transitioning to a circular model, businesses can:
- Reduce dependency on virgin materials
- Increase resource security
- Lower carbon emissions
- Comply with evolving legislation
- Meet customer demand for sustainable products
Circularity is scalable, profitable, and essential. And crucially, it’s how we begin to push Earth Overshoot Day later in the calendar.
Thinking circular: knowledge and insight
The latest news, insights, and thought leadership from across Reconomy and the waste management industry.
