Today, Australia reaches its Earth Overshoot Day. This marks the point in the year where if everyone in the world lived like Australians, we would have used more natural resources than our planet can regenerate in a year.

In other words, if everyone lived like us here in Australia, we would be exploiting the Earth’s resources from this point in the year onwards, rather than living in balance with nature. This stark milestone highlights the urgent need for action to shift towards a more sustainable way of living, both here and around the world.

Australia’s overshoot day arrives alarmingly early in the year due to our lifestyles creating greater demand for resources than elsewhere in the world, with the global Earth Overshoot Day typically occurring later in the year (last year it fell on August 1). The initiative of mapping both the global and country-based overshoot days is led by the Global Footprint Network as a means of measuring humanity’s ecological footprint and highlighting the need to scale down consumption and move to more sustainable systems.

Australia consistently ranks among the highest resource consumers per capita in the world, an unenviable position driven by our high energy use, resource-intensive industries, and significant waste generation. You may have heard the saying before, but if everyone in the world lived like Australians, we would require multiple planets to sustain our lifestyle.

While this is clearly a challenging situation, there remain significant opportunities for us to change for the better. By embracing circular economy principles in design and logistics, increasing renewable energy adoption, reducing food waste, and improving resource efficiency, Australia can push its Overshoot Day later in the year and reduce its overall environmental impact.

But it will take collective action across government, industry and Australian communities to achieve this. Here are some key changes Australians can make at home, work and school to contribute:

Consume responsibly: Firstly, and most importantly, we must bring overall consumption down in Australia to move our overshoot day back in the year, so embracing conscious consumption is critical. Reduce what you buy new where possible, reuse as much as you can and, where you must buy something, choose second hand or sustainable products.

Reduce waste: Prioritise reusing, recycling and composting (ideally in this order!) to help keep valuable resources in circulation. Take advantage of free resources that are available to help with this, such as your local council’s waste and recycling team and platforms like Recycling Near You.

Embrace renewable energy: If you have the time and resources to do it, support clean energy solutions by considering solar, wind, and other renewable sources for homes and businesses. This can include signing up to clean energy providers as well as installing solutions of your own, so don’t give up if solar panels are too difficult or expensive to install at home or in your workplace.

Support circular solutions: Advocate for and engage with businesses and policies that prioritise sustainable production and consumption. Sometimes these can be easy to identify from the outset, while other times it can take a bit of digging to find out what is best environmentally for you or your business/workplace.

Beyond individual action, systemic change is essential. Government at all levels can implement policies that drive sustainability, whether these focus on investing in renewable energy, strengthening circular economy initiatives, or enforcing waste reduction measures. Businesses, too, have a critical role in innovating sustainable solutions in the design of their products and embedding responsible resource management into their operations.

Australia’s Earth Overshoot Day is an important reminder of the urgent need to act now to ensure a safe and sustainable future for all. By making conscious choices and advocating for change in our communities and around the country, we can help #MoveTheDate and build a future where our planet’s resources are used responsibly.