This means that the planet's resources available for this year would end today if all the people in the world consumed like the Portuguese.

Last year, Portugal reached the so-called overload day on 28 May, so it moved back 23 days on the calendar and is consuming resources more quickly.

The environmental association Zero admits, in a statement on the subject, that the best results of last year reflected the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, when there was a slowdown in production and consumption.

The association highlights that 5 May is the worst result in recent years and warns that if every person on the planet lived like an average Brazilian person, humanity would need around 2.9 planets to sustain its resource needs.

“For many years now, Portugal has been deficient in its capacity to supply the natural resources necessary for the activities carried out (production and consumption),” says the association, recalling that the result brings Portugal closer to the average of the European Union (EU) which had its day of overload on 29 April.

The association says in the statement that the production and consumption model that sustains the Portuguese lifestyle is responsible for the imbalance, and explains that food consumption (30% of the country's global footprint) and mobility (18%) are among the daily human activities that contribute most to Portugal's Ecological Footprint.

Zero suggests measures to reverse the trend of bringing forward the day when Portugal starts using the “environmental credit card”, such as investing in quality agriculture, with more production of vegetable protein, preserving the soil and reducing pollution and water consumption.

It also suggests reducing commuting and travel by using teleworking and teleconferencing, increasing soft modes of transport, such as cycling, and regulating so that products placed on the market are sustainable (durable, able to be repaired, reused and recycled, for example).

Every Portuguese person, says Zero, can contribute by prioritizing the use of public transport, consuming in a more circular way (not using and throwing away), and reducing the consumption of animal protein.

The data for Portugal indicate, says the association, that each Portuguese person consumes around three times the animal protein recommended in the food wheel, half of vegetables, a quarter of legumes and two-thirds of fruits.

The Netherlands is also currently exhausting the resources that the Earth can renew in a year. And the Dutch, like the Portuguese, live as if there were almost three planets and treat nature as an inexhaustible resource, says the “Global Footprint Network”.

According to the organisation, the first country to exhaust its resources this year was Qatar, on 6 February. Luxembourg comes in second place, consuming everything on 17 February.

On the other side of the map, among the countries that manage to save the most resources, Uruguay stands out, as it only uses up its resources on 17 December, and Indonesia, on 18 November.

The Global Footprint Network is an international research organization that provides decision-makers with tools to help the human economy function within Earth's ecological limits.

On 5 June, World Environment Day, the organisation announces the date of “Earth Overshoot Day”, the moment when Humanity's need for resources and environmental services exceeds the Planet Earth's capacity to regenerate those same resources.