THEhe Sunday that just passed was not a Sunday like the others. While many of us were enjoying the first glimpses of spring sunshine, Italy reached an alarming milestone for sustainability:Overshoot day. Literally, the “day of overcoming” also said “Ecological Debt Day”the exact moment in which our country exhausts all the natural resources that the Earth is able to regenerate in an entire year. This means that from today we started living “on credit”.
Overshoot day, a birthday we wouldn’t want to celebrate
We are not talking about a bank statement, but about something much more intimate and vital: namely the water we drink, the soil we cultivate, the air we breathe. According to data released by Wwf and calculated from Global footprint networkan international organization that measures the ecological footprint, were just enough for us 123 days to consume our entire 2026 environmental budget. It’s as if we received our annual salary on January 1st and had already spent it all before the summer. With all due respect to environmental sustainability.
A race against time that accelerates every year
The data that should make us reflect is not only the date itself, but the speed with which we are “eating” the future. Compared to 2025, we reached the limit three days early. If we look back, nostalgia is tinged with concern: in the seventies, humanity managed to make enough resources almost until Christmas. Today, globally, we consume as if we had almost two planets at our disposal, 1.7 to be precise. If the whole world lived with the lifestyle of us Italians, we would even need three planets. This happens because we are not consuming the “interests” of nature, but we are affecting the capital itselfleaving future generations an increasingly poor and fragile ecosystem.
Once we had enough resources until Christmas, today in May we are already “in the red”. (Official website www.overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/)
How our homes and habits have changed
But how did we get to this point? The answer lies in the folds of our everyday lifein those small and large changes that have transformed the face of our families over the last fifty years. We have become richer in objects, but poorer in natural space. Istat statistics tell a story of profound transformation.
Our homes consume too much
If once family spending was concentrated on essential goods such as bread, milk or clothes, today our budget slides towards technological comfort and services. Our homes have become energy intensive: the air conditioner, once a luxury item, is now present in one in two homes. The technologyfrom computers to smartphones, requires a constant flow of energy and raw materials which weigh on the planet’s budget.
Sustainability: the weight of our choices
There are two sectors where our impact is felt most strongly: how we move And what we put on the plate. Italy holds a European record of which it is not proud: we are the people with the highest number of cars per inhabitant. Around seven out of ten Italians own a car; translated into environmental terms, it means an enormous load of emissions that warms the atmosphere.
In just four months we consumed everything that nature had made available to us for the entire year. (Getty Images)
Too much meat is bad for human and environmental health
Our diet has also changed. If in the sixties meat was the Sunday dishwith a consumption of around 20 kilos per year per person, today that share has quadrupled, almost 80 kilos. Producing meat requires enormous amounts of water and landmaking our shopping cart much “heavier” on the Earth than it was for our grandparents.
A soil that disappears under the concrete
While we change habits inside the house, outside the landscape is literally disappearing. ISPRA, the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, has raised a clear alarm: we have covered over 7% of the national territory with concrete. To understand the gravity of the figure, just think that in Italy almost 3 square meters of soil are consumed per second. It’s a dizzying pace that takes the earth’s breath awayprevents rainwater from filtering into the ground and reduces space for biodiversity.
It is possible to reverse the direction of sustainability
However, all this must not lead to resignation. Overshoot day is not an immutable verdictbut an invitation to rethink our idea of well-being. Reversing course means rediscovering the value of quality over quantity. Moving to a circular economy, where nothing is wasted and everything is reused, choosing gentler mobility, preferring diets richer in vegetables and supporting clean energy are not just sacrifices, but gestures of care towards the place that hosts us.
We only have one PlanetLearning to respect its rhythms is the only way to guarantee our future that is, as well as sustainable, truly livable for everyone.