Materialflows.net

For a better understanding of the world of raw materials

Background and Data

materialflows.net is an online portal providing national material flow data, state-of-the-art visualisations, and analyses. It is hosted by the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business and funded by the Austrian Ministry of Climate and Environmental Protection.

The website is based on the UN IRP Global Material Flows Database. Data and visualisations cover more than 200 countries, the time period of 1970 to 2024, and more than 300 different materials aggregated into 13 categories of material flows. The years 2022 to 2024 are estimated based upon economic proxies.

Tell us your story

Our user stories present selected examples of MFA in practice. If you have your own story to tell, let us know how our website helped you.

Cardio training

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Pool Exercises

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Boxing circuit

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Visualisation Centre

The Visualisation Centre is the access point to a large variety of interactive visualisations and related analyses.

Use the explanatory videos to find the section best suiting your requirements.

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Check out the two new features in the Visualisation Centre:

The Policy Dashboard analyses country performance using a set of indicators and related targets.
The Sector Profiles apply the sector perspective to analyse global material flows.

Stories

The most relevant analyses of global material use are
presented in informative stories.

Get an overview of your topic of interest including
related interactive visualisations.

Partners and Funders

MATERIALFLOWS.NET in practice

Data on national and global material flows are gaining relevance for informing strategies and campaigns of different stakeholders.

In 2016, an expert team publishes an assessment report for the UN Environment International Resource Panel called "Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity". For the report a MFA dataset is used which had been compiled to large extent on the basis of the data underlying materialflows.net.

United Nations

The study “The Global Resource Footprint of Nations (2014)”, produced as part of the European FP7 research project CREEA, uses data from materialflows.net to calculate material footprints for various countries and regions around the world.

Research

In 2018, the German Environment Agency (UBA) publishes its report "The Use of Natural resources - Report for Germany 2018".

Data from materialflows.net are used for the analyses of international interconnections of Germany in the world.

Policy makers

As a collaboration with the international Friends of the Earth network campaigns on sustainable resource use and supply chain management are supported by analyses building on global material flow data from materialflows.net.

NGOs

Test your knowledge in our Quiz

Do you want to get an insight in trends and drivers of global resource use and have fun at the same time? Try out our Quiz.

Countries

200+

years

45+

RAW MATERIALS

300+

INDICATORS

15+