We are now operating in overshoot.

On July 29, the world passed Earth Overshoot Day. Humanity’s resource consumption after the first seven months of 2019 exceeded the amount of resources Earth can regenerate in one entire year. Three days earlier than last year, July 29 was the earliest Earth Overshoot Day to date, according to the Global Footprint Network.

But not only are we living on a resource budget that would require 1.75 Earths to sustain, we are also trashing the environment as we dispose of the waste from the use, or misuse, of these resources. 

According to Green Choices, waste disposal releases toxins, wastes precious resources and contributes significant amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere. And even though 75 percent of America’s waste is recyclable, Americans recycle only 30 percent of it.

Many people have decided to do their part to diminish the impact of waste disposal by adjusting their lifestyles to reduce their ecological footprint. A practice environmentalists commonly advocate for is a zero-waste lifestyle. 

Treehugger, a popular sustainability blog, outlines several lifestyle choices people can make to reduce their waste significantly. For example, old kitchen sponges and toothbrushes can be repurposed for cleaning bathrooms, and bamboo and hemp brushes can be used for cleaning and composted when no longer needed. 

Two women from Victoria, British Columbia, Katelin Leblond and Tara Smith-Arnsdorf, swapped out their trash cans for 2-liter glass jars, reusing and composting to the extent that they were able to fit a year’s waste in a single jar. They took the top 10 items they could not live without, such as hair elastics, batteries, mustard, and makeup, and replaced each with a reusable alternative, according to an article by Treehugger. Using items for multiple purposes and avoiding buying new products whenever possible allowed the two to produce minimal waste.

According to Trash Is For Tossers (TIFT), a blog written by a New York environmentalist that follows a zero-waste lifestyle, the most basic goal of zero-waste living is to keep waste completely out of landfills. Although rarely achieved in practice, it involves raising awareness about the importance of clean habits such as recycling and reusing resources. A common problem that prevents people from achieving zero waste is not realizing what can be recycled.

For example, over half a million pounds of crayons are thrown away each year. According to Family Handyman, these crayons never biodegrade, filling landfills with “waxy sludge.” Instead, crayons can be sent to the Crayon Initiative for melting and remanufacturing.

Other commonly reusable items are shingles, prescription drugs, wine corks, sports equipment, toothbrushes, CDs and more.

In addition to learning about recycling, adapting a vigilant mindset is important to reducing waste, Green Team president Winston Liu said.

“When you are about to throw something away, always think about whether you can reuse it,” said Liu, a junior. “At the very least, is there anything you are throwing away that could possibly be beneficial for you to keep for later use? If you continuously think about that, it will eventually cut down your waste, and then it becomes possible to reach zero-waste.”

The Green Team is taking on an active role in raising awareness about plastic pollution. The group’s engraving booth during August’s Falcon Fest schedule pickup event provided students a place to personalize their water bottles, encouraging them to reuse. Over the past few years, the club has hosted speaker panels, coordinated Earth Day activities and added labels to recycling bins in order to encourage proper recycling.

Teachers also have encouraged green lifestyles. Each year AP Environmental Science and biology teacher Kristen Thomson has her students look at ecological footprint websites to see their impact on the environment. A person’s ecological footprint is the total resources required for their level of consumption and waste disposal.

Websites such as the Global Footprint Network provide short quizzes that result in a personal Earth Overshoot Day. It also tells users the number of Earths required to sustain the world if everyone lived in a similar manner.

“The reason I had my students do it was to build awareness of our daily habits,” Thomson said. “It’s not necessarily designed to make anyone feel bad about it. It’s just for learning to appreciate what we have and question whether we need everything.”

A key takeaway Thomson wanted students to have was to be able to compare their footprint to other people in the world. In developed areas, the personal Earth Overshoot Days are often significantly earlier than the actual Earth Overshoot Day, indicating that many people in underprivileged regions live off fewer natural resources.

“I think that aiming to produce as little waste as possible is ideal, but given its difficulty I don’t think people should feel bad if they try their best and at times are unable to,” Thomson said.

Another advocate of living a greener lifestyle is girls’ cross country coach Danny Moon. After learning more about the impacts of recycling, Moon said that he has decided to decrease the team’s plastic use by asking runners to bring their own reusable water bottles.

“I used to bring plastic water bottles every year — 30 cases of water for cross country,” Moon said. “There are 24 bottles in a case, and that’s a lot of bottles. Instead, everyone can bring their own water bottle that’s reusable.”

He said his motivation to cut down on his waste stems from watching the National Geographic channel and reading the magazine, where he saw the detrimental impacts plastics have on fish, shrimp and the humans who eat them.

After using plastic water bottles for his athletes during his 11 years as a coach, learning of the damage he was inflicting on the environment quickly changed Moon’s mind.

Moon plans on using larger water jugs, which require significantly less plastic than individual bottles for the same amount of water to fill students’ water bottles. An article by the Sierra Club explains that four 8-ounce containers would use 60 percent more plastic than a single 32-ounce container with the same diameter-to-height ratio.

Reducing the use of plastic bottles is one of several ways to avoid plastic waste. Others include using beeswax or candles instead of air fresheners, using masking tape instead of Scotch tape, avoiding synthetic clothes and using old newspaper or other scratch paper to pick up dog waste.

Even with the efforts of environmentally conscious groups and individuals to raise awareness about recycling, Liu said that individual action is necessary for change to occur.

“Becoming green is not a one day thing,” Liu said. “You don’t have to convert to it immediately, but every little bit helps.”