Filter by what a material is, or by where you meet it. Each page walks the full process with every figure sourced.
Iron ore is rust. Getting the oxygen back out takes 1,500 °C and a tonne of carbon — the whole decarbonisation problem in one sentence.
Rock that is more than 99% waste becomes the metal carrying electricity through almost everything you own.
The commonest metal in the crust, and one of the hardest to free from its ore. Smelting it is really a way of storing electricity.
Two unrelated rocks give the same metal by completely different routes — and most of the world’s supply comes from the harder one.
The most-used manufactured material there is, made by taking a rock apart at 1,450 °C and letting it reassemble in water.
Burn it, slake it, leave it in the air, and it slowly turns back into stone. The one material that runs in a loop.
Sand, soda ash and limestone melted together. What decides whether it becomes a window or optical fibre is how the melt is shaped.
The most-produced chemical on Earth, and most of it begins as a pollutant someone had to clean up.
The one industrial raw material nobody manufactures. What we do is find it, wash it, and split it three ways.
No material matches both filters.