Earth Overshoot Day 2025

Earth Overshoot Day - also known as World Overshoot Day - marks the day on which humanity has used up all the natural resources that the earth can renew within a year. From this point onwards, we are living beyond our means and at the expense of future generations.

The date is calculated by the Global Footprint Network, which compares our global consumption of resources - wood, water, agricultural land and CO₂ absorption capacity - with the planet's natural capacity for renewal. The earlier Earth Overshoot Day falls in the calendar, the greater the imbalance between consumption and regeneration - and the more urgent the need for action.

Earth Overshoot Day in 2025 falls on July 24 - around a week earlier than in previous years, when we reached it on August 1, 2024 and August 2, 2023. This leap forward makes it clear that the climate protection and resource-saving measures taken to date are not sufficiently curbing growing consumption. Global consumption is increasing faster than efficiency gains and renewable energies can keep up.

The closer the date gets to the middle of the year, the more urgent the wake-up call becomes to fundamentally change our production and lifestyles. Only a consistent circular economy and coordinated international measures can reverse the trend and stop the planetary boundaries being exceeded.

The calculation of Earth Overshoot Day is based on a clear formula: (Global Biocapacity ÷ Ecological Footprint) × 365 = calendar date. The biocapacity represents the amount of resources that forests, farmland, pastureland, fish stocks and oceans can replenish each year, while the ecological footprint records how much land we humans actually use.

When the resulting value is transferred to the calendar, it shows the day on which we exhaust our annual nature budget. The Global Footprint Network updates this figure every year and also publishes an online toolthat anyone can use to determine their own Overshoot Day and identify potential savings.

This year, Germany's Overshoot Day fell on May 3, 2025 - almost three months before the global deadline. Germany is thus demonstrating the extent to which a high standard of living is driving up resource consumption. If the whole world lived at German consumption levels, we would mathematically need almost three planets to meet our needs.

While industrialized nations such as the USA or Qatar already exhaust their nature budget in spring , the deadline in many lower-income countries only shifts to late summer or autumn. This discrepancy makes it clear that wealthy countries have a special responsibility to reduce their ecological footprint and thus postpone Global Overshoot Day in the long term.

Every extra day we take off Earth Overshoot Day is the result of a sum of seemingly small decisions - from using electricity consciously to reaching for seasonal products in the supermarket. It's easy to forget that our four-legged friends' bowls are also part of the equation: meat-based recipes require enormous amounts of land, water and energy for rearing and processing. Those who opt for plant-based alternatives instead, such as vegan dog food from VEGDOG , significantly reduce the resource requirements and protect the climate and animal welfare at the same time.

Give your dog and the planet a treat - try VEGDOG!