OVERSHOOT · A PLANETARY MATERIAL ATLAS
Where did it come from?Where did it go?
A planetary atlas of material flows. See where materials come from, how they move and transform, and where they go—from extraction to everyday life and back into circulation.
UN Comtrade · 20 leading reported trade connections · 2024. Geography: Natural Earth
Choose what to trace.
Explore all 18 materials
An editorial lens from Ed Conway’s Material World: begin with the substance, then follow the places and processes that make it useful. The atlas brings that perspective to life through maps, journeys and independently sourced data.
Follow a material through real places.
A mine, a port, a refinery, a power plant. Explore how materials change form and move between them.
From the desert
to the coast.
Escondida’s copper leaves in two forms. Concentrate travels by pipeline; metal cathodes take the railway to export ports.
Rock becomes
aluminium.
A 244 km pipeline carries bauxite to Alunorte. The refinery makes alumina, which supplies the nearby Albras smelter.
Four mines.
One power plant.
Coal from four Wyoming mines travels by rail to James H. Miller Jr. in Alabama, where coal is used to generate electricity.
Open a journey to explore its places, transport connections and material transformations, then keep following the wider world around it.
Follow the material world.
Explore facilities and their incoming and outgoing material journeys.
See more. Connect more.
Country accounts, trade, industry and the built world. Follow 12.43 million observations through 56 connected source tables.
The world we've built.
Compare the materials held in buildings, infrastructure and products across 27 EU countries.
2022 material stocks · EEAACROSS BORDERSFollow the trading world.
Explore European goods trade by product, reporting country, partner and direction.
2025 trade quantities · EurostatWASTE & RECOVERY · ENGLANDFollow the next chapter.
Explore the facilities receiving plastic packaging for recovery, then inspect their onward waste records.
2025 facility returns · Environment AgencyEvery material has a journey.
Connect extraction, production, trade, everyday use and return. Start anywhere. Follow what interests you.
- 01
Extract or grow
Discover the mines, forests and fields where the material world begins.
Place accounts - 02
Make and refine
Follow the furnaces, refineries and factories that turn raw materials into useful things.
Material guides - 03
Move across borders
Explore the trade connections linking producing regions with the rest of the world.
Explore trade - 04
Remain in use
See how materials become the buildings, infrastructure and products around us.
Material accounts - 05
Leave or return
Follow materials after use, through collection, recovery, disposal and return.
Discard & return
A world of connections. Grounded in sources.
Explore the places and processes behind the human-made world. Open the sources behind each map, connection and measurement to take your understanding further.