Lake County Ohio Weal

  Statista: A History of Resource Extraction and Acceleration According to figures published in the UNEP’s Global Material Flows Database, extraction of four main material groups - biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and non-metallic minerals - has skyrocketed in the past 50 years. Where a total of 31.1 billion tons of these combined materials was extracted from the Earth in 1970, when the UNEP’s records began, that figure is estimated to hit 107 billion tons this year. As the following chart shows, in just five decades, the world has transformed from being a predominantly biomass-extracting global society, to one that extracts even larger quantities of non-metallic minerals, i.e. materials used in products such as cement, ceramics and glass. You will find more infographics at Statista According to online magazine Monthly Review, there have been two major periods of resource-use acceleration in recent history, with the first occurring in 1950–70, linked to the rapid economic expan...

  Statista: China Leads Critical Minerals Production Demand for critical minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel is soaring. These raw materials are used in a range of new technologies, from electric cars to wind turbines, which are becoming ever more important as the world moves towards a green transition. Experts forecast that this trend is set to accelerate, with global production of cobalt, graphite and lithium set to increase nearly six-fold between now and 2050 (World Bank). You will find more infographics at Statista Data recently published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) shows that China accounts for around two-thirds of the world's processing/refining capacity for critical minerals. While the extraction of these materials takes place all around the globe, China currently accounts for more than half of the world's refining of aluminum, lithium and cobalt, around 90 percent of that of rare earth metals and manganese and 100...

  Statista: Big Tech's Reliance upon Conflict Materials Aug 2, 2024 According to its conflict minerals report (CMR) for 2023, Amazon cannot rule out having sourced minerals from nine of ten African countries where human rights-violating militias finance themselves through mining. These countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and Angola. The other four members of GAMAM, a group synonymous with the moniker Big Tech, also potentially source some of the raw materials processed in contracted smelters from these regions. You will find more infographics at Statista Both Apple and Google’s parent company Alphabet reported that smelters integrated into their supply chains potentially processed minerals from six of the ten countries on the African continent mentioned above. Meta lists five of these countries in its report, while Microsoft claims to have reason to be...