Overshoot

Did any of you know about Earth Overshoot Day? Did any of you know it just happened on 21st August? I didn’t. It passed me quietly although it is a pretty important date.

It happened on Saturday while we went for a family brekkie at the local cafe, met up with our tax advisor @ GEM (if you need green financial advice try these guys, they are amazing and ecologically conscious) and had a bbq with friends. Not the greenest day you can have but also not too bad.

Bad is that from that Saturday on until 31st December we all live our lifes on credit environmentally.

Why? Because we overshoot.

Earth Overshoot Day marks the day we exhaust our ecological budget for the year. Once we pass this day, we will have demanded all the ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food – that nature can provide this year. That sounds pretty scary doesn’t it? Still 4 months to go and we are already broke?

Because we are all honest people let’s start finding ways to pay our debts back.

Without even knowing about Earth Overshoot Day we have started a great credit repay with our refusal of plastic drink bottles (which is going really well by the way). With not buying any plastic drinking bottles we avoid virgin materials to be used for producing the bottle, no carbon is emitted for transportation and we don’t use more water than the actual amount we need for drinking.

Another credit repay is my visit of a second hand market last weekend. I got cloths and toys for Little M . Great way to reuse instead of buying new. Read my post Second Love why second hand is a perfect way to life green.

There are many more ways to get active and I am sure you’re all doing great things already. Share with us the ideas you have to reduce our overdraw.

~ Sustainable Mum ~