The Anthropocene epoch is an informal unit of time describing the most recent time period on earth; when human activity started to seriously impact global chemical cycles, the climate and the biosphere. The Earth's state has changed and that should be defined by this new epoch. Some have argued defining this new epoch as beginning in 1950 would deny earlier impacts of human life on the planet - this is not the case. Humans have impacted the planet for thousands of years of the Holocene. But not on the same scale of disruption. The impacts of our practices since the industrial revolution, including the introduction of novel (synthetic) materials, will be imprinted in geological deposits for ever. And considering many of our impacts on the planet are now deemed irreversible, the Earth has no feasible route back to a Holocene state. It is time to formalise that.