3:52pm UK, Saturday April 15, 2006

Britain is living "beyond its means" by using up the world's natural resources at an unsustainable rate, a report has claimed.

The study says the day the country moves into "ecological debt" - meaning the date at which it must start relying on imports to meet its needs - moves forward every year.

180 recycling rubbish

Britain is using too much, too quickly, the report warns

Called the Interdependence Report, it says Easter Sunday is the day Britain will go into "ecological debt" for 2006.

The study, by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and the Open University, warned: "As our total consumption grows, the day on which we begin consuming beyond our environmental means moves earlier in the year.

"In 1961, it was July 9. By 1981, Britain's ecological debt day was reached almost two months earlier, on May 14.

"The world as a whole is also living beyond its ecosystems' capacity to regenerate itself - leading to long-term, overall environmental degradation - and goes into ecological debt on October 23."

NEF policy director Andrew Simms said: "The UK's growing interdependence with the rest of the world is a fact and an opportunity. But we are abusing it.

"On one level there is absolutely nothing wrong with importing goods and services to meet our needs but our eyes are bigger than our planet.

"If the whole world understandably wanted to copy our levels of consumption, we would need the resources of more than three planets like Earth. And we only have one.

"Our economy and way of life need to make contact with the real world before we accidentally eat it whole."