Earth Overshoot Day 2022

The Earth's Overshoot Day in 2022 falls on July 28th.

 This day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what the Earth can regenerate in that year. From this date onwards, humanity is living beyond the planet's capacity; creating a resource deficit.

 

Each country has its own overshoot day which is calculated by looking at its biocapacity and the demand for ecological resources. If the ecological deficit is high, the overshoot day will be earlier. The UK's overshoot day in 2022 was May 19th.  Global campaigners want to push the date back, so that Earth Overshoot Day lands on 31st December – meaning that the resources consumed in a year are in line with what the Earth can regenerate.

In 2020, due to the pandemic, the date of Earth Overshoot Day was three weeks later than the previous year. This was due to the national lockdowns and the exceptional slowdown of the current economic model. As the world all but ground to a halt, reduced CO2 emissions and less deforestation around the world gave the planet a few more days to heal.

However, the downward trend has proven to be temporary and Overshoot Day for 2022 is on the same day as in 2021. If the economy picks up and unchecked growth continues, Earth Overshoot Day will continue to advance a little further each year, putting humanity in greater ecological debt.

If each person in every country lived like the average British person, it would take almost three planets to meet resource demand in one year. The demands would increase:

  • Deforestation
  • Overfishing
  • Overfarming
  • Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.

About one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption — 1.3 billion tonnes every year — gets lost or wasted, with high and low-income countries dissipating roughly the same quantities of food, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

 
 

Since 1972 we have been collecting waste from farmers, abattoirs, meat processing plants and the catering industry, making JG Pears one of the UK's leading processors of food waste from animal by-products.

With our rendering facilities, we have been at the forefront of the circular economy for almost 50 years, pioneering environmentally aware practices that process by-products into finished products that are utilised around the world. Our services ensure that food waste is diverted from landfill and that more of the resources put into rearing livestock enter the closed loop cycle.

To ensure the security of our planet, it’s important that we move towards a more circular economy to remove preventable waste and ensure that valuable resources are utilised to the highest percentage.

We are committed to operating sustainably and are proud to make business decisions that put environmental best practice front and centre. We hope that Overshoot Day 2023 is much later in the year and we will continue to invest and innovate to perpetuate a Circular Economy.

If you would like to find out how we can make sure that your food waste or animal by-products become part of the Circular Economy, please contact us.

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