Earth Overshoot Day marks the point when humanity’s demand for the planet’s natural resources in a given year exceeds the amount it can regenerate in that year. This year it falls on July 29, nearly eight months in, which should be interpreted as a stark warning from our shared planet.

Whenever we buy a new product, we’re using up more of our limited virgin materials and adding to the demand. Put simply, we produce and consume way too much stuff, and our precious resources are running out as a result.

But how damaging can everyday objects, such as kettles, cars and mattresses be? The answer is extremely damaging, and there is a clear link between the overconsumption of natural resources and the climate crisis.

It may not be obvious when looking at a finished product, but the scale of resources it takes to extract raw materials and manufacture new products is extremely resource-intensive. The climate crisis is already here and it’s made worse by the planet-warming carbon emissions associated with the overconsumption of the earth’s natural resources.

Take a modern example, a mobile phone. Scientists at the University of Plymouth discovered a mobile phone requires on average 10 to 15kg of metal ores, including gold, copper and nickel, to produce. The precious metals are mined, transported across the globe and processed in factories. There will also be other material impacts, from the screens to the packaging. From just one mobile phone, we can see how much natural resource is required. When you add up the vast amounts of energy, and therefore carbon emissions, from mining, importing resources from abroad and manufacturing them into mobile phones, the environmental cost is huge.

We can all agree a functioning mobile phone isn’t considered a waste. But what about when it’s broken or out of style and it gets discarded in favour of a new one? Every single new product puts a strain on natural resources and has knock-on social and health impacts wherever they are taken from.

The average Scot consumes 18.4 tonnes of materials every year. A sustainable level of material use, which would still allow for a high quality of life, is about eight tonnes per person per year. Shifting to a more circular economy, where existing resources are kept in circulation, is a key part of the solution. And we can all easily apply circular principles to our everyday life.

Currently, we tend to buy lots of stuff, only to use it for a short amount of time. We then label a lot of it as waste where it either languishes in the back of our cupboards or in landfill.

Earlier this year we’ve seen reports of big businesses acting carelessly with unsold stock in their warehouses and generating eye-watering amounts of needless waste.

Things like recycling and driving an electric car will edge us closer to net-zero targets, but we must go further and faster.

We can buy smarter, buy long-lasting and buy fewer single-use items. Could you rent your next party outfit rather than buy it? Could you upcycle an old bedside cabinet rather than throwing it out? Could you take your broken laptop to a repair café?

The circular economy sounds like a complicated concept at first, but really, it’s all about reducing our demand for natural resources by producing less stuff in the first place and reusing, remanufacturing and recycling existing products and materials to extend their useful life for as long as possible. There should be no waste in a circular economy.

Lots of Scottish businesses are already helping Scots move towards a fully circular future.

The newly launched Remade store in Glasgow’s Govanhill is a social enterprise that repairs broken household items. The repair and reuse shop helps their customers build a longer relationship with their goods. Most belongings, from tech to textiles, can be repaired with the right know-how, and with more avenues available, Scotland will be able to shift away from a throwaway society.

The Herald:

Food waste is another major contributor to greenhouse gases. Scotland wastes way too much food and most of it comes from our homes. Food requires carbon to grow and get onto our shelves, and there’s a double whammy when it emits methane when left to rot in landfill.

Outside of the home, we know there are fantastic redistribution services available to connect people in communities across Scotland with surplus food from retailers and the food industry.

We all can and should do more to tackle this issue, and the recycling caddy in your kitchen is a great starting point.

Earth Overshoot Day is a reminder that our planet’s resources are precious and finite. We’re lucky to live in a society where we can order whatever we need with a touch of a button. But clearly our current rate of resource consumption is unsustainable.

We can, and we must, buy and waste less, not only for our own benefit but for future generations too.

We’re living like we have a second Earth full of resources out there when we only have one.

Explore what having a second Earth would look like using our Augmented Reality tool, found on our social media channels and How to Waste Less website, and the camera on your phone or tablet.

Once you spot it, screenshot to share on Facebook or Instagram stories, tagging @HowToWasteless.

 

This article is brought to you in association with Zero Waste Scotland.