We Consume Almost Two Worlds in One Year

The increasing population and consumption demand, which is increasing many times faster than the population, causes the world's resources to be depleted very quickly. While our population of over 8 billion is increasing at a faster rate, unfortunately, the resources of our planet are not increasing at the same rate. Non-renewable resources come to an end.

The World Footprint Network calculates when we will use up the world's renewable resources each year. This day is called Earth Overshoot Day.

Calculations since 1971 reveal that, with a few exceptions, we are depleting our resources more and more each year. According to the calculations, although we were able to use our resources until December 25 in 1971, the calculation for 2021 revealed the fact that we consumed the resources that our planet made available to us on July 30. In other words, we consumed the resources that the world could renew in a year in only 7 months and stole resources from our future in the remaining 5 months.

Looking at how much the overshoot day has been moved backward in the past 50 years, we can estimate that we will use up all our one-year resources in just six months within the next 10 years. In other words, we will consume two Earths in one year.

Of course, it is also possible to push back the overshoot day. Because we stayed at home more in 2020 due to the pandemic, our carbon emissions decreased, thus, we used the resources we consumed on 29 July in 2019, almost one more month, until 22 August.

The Global Footprint Network calculates the World Overshoot Day for both the world as a whole and for individual countries. This allows us to see how much sooner the world would reach its Overshoot Day if everyone lived like the citizens of that country.

According to these data, the country that is expected to finish the resources of 2022 at the latest is Jamaica, while the country that is expected to finish the earliest is Qatar. If the whole world lived like Jamaica, we would only need to steal 10 days from the future. However, if the whole world lived like Qatar, we would need to steal 324 days from the future.

The result in the light of this information; Even the country with the best current consumption habits cannot be satisfied with annual renewable resources, we are consuming our own future.

For this reason, we need to take responsibility, both individually and institutionally, so that we and future generations can live in a better world.

As Polat Makina, we fulfil our part. Thanks to maximum efficiency and minimum energy consumption in our production line, we keep the carbon footprint we produce at a minimum.

In addition to the low carbon footprint of the machines we manufacture, we are also very sensitive to sustainability as a company.

For example; in order to ensure the recyclability of our stands that represent us at international fairs, we started to use recyclable glass stands instead of traditional wooden stands.

With this and our many other Sustainability Practices in the last 1 year,

• We saved 114 trees from being cut down by recycling 6704 Kg of paper and cardboard 

• We saved 336 liters of gasoline by recycling 1157 kg of metal.

• We saved 16 barrels of petroleum and 5774 kWh of electricity by recycling 1022 kg of plastic.