Metals and minerals
Copper
Where it comes from, what share of a sector’s output it is, and which conflicts the model routes through it.
This page shows production, shares and inputs. It shows no death toll per tonne. The shares below say what fraction of a sector’s output this material is and what fraction of a conflict’s harm the model routes to it; multiplying either by a count of people produces a result, and a result is not published until it has a run, an uncertainty interval and a confidence grade.
- Critical raw material — Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 (Critical Raw Materials Act), Annex II — the 34 critical raw materials. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1252/2024-05-03/eng
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Who produces it
The publisher’s own figures for 2025, across 14 countries. Nothing here has been attributed to anything.
| Country | Produced | Share | Figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chile CHL |
5,300,000 t | 26.5% | estimated |
| Congo, Dem. Rep. COD |
3,200,000 t | 16.0% | estimated |
| Peru PER |
2,700,000 t | 13.5% | estimated |
| China CHN |
1,800,000 t | 9.0% | estimated |
| Russian Federation RUS |
1,300,000 t | 6.5% | estimated |
| United States USA |
1,000,000 t | 5.0% | estimated |
| Zambia ZMB |
940,000 t | 4.7% | estimated |
| Australia AUS |
730,000 t | 3.6% | estimated |
| Indonesia IDN |
710,000 t | 3.5% | estimated |
| Kazakhstan KAZ |
710,000 t | 3.5% | estimated |
| Mexico MEX |
690,000 t | 3.4% | estimated |
| Canada CAN |
500,000 t | 2.5% | estimated |
| Poland POL |
410,000 t | 2.0% | estimated |
| India IND |
23,000 t | 0.1% | estimated |
Production figures: FAO, FAOSTAT, CC BY 4.0. FAO endorsement of any derived figure is neither stated nor implied.
What share of a sector’s output it is
Divided out of production rather than typed in: a sector’s material split is the share of what it actually produced. These are the GLOBAL pooled figures; the model itself uses a separate mix for every country and year, because a global one would attribute Congolese deaths to Chilean copper.
| Sector | Share of output | How |
|---|---|---|
| Mining of metal ores 07 |
0.7% | global mix · LOW |
Mass and value answer different questions and are never added. A tonne of gold and a tonne of iron ore are the same mass and are not the same money, so the share of a sector’s harm this material carries depends on which was asked.
Which conflicts route harm to it
The mean share of each conflict’s harm that the model routes to this material, averaged over the country-years it covers. A mean of shares is not a share of a total, and the two differ whenever coverage is uneven.
| Conflict | Mean share of its harm | Years |
|---|---|---|
| DR Congo (Zaire): Government | 2.16% | 26 |
| Government of Rwanda - Civilians | 1.55% | 22 |
| Jalisco Cartel New Generation - Sinaloa Cartel | 0.27% | 11 |
| Sudan: Government | 0.17% | 37 |
| Colombia: Government | 0.11% | 37 |
These are shares of a conflict, not counts of people. The number of deaths they correspond to is computed and is not published: it has no uncertainty interval and has not been backtested.
Harm per tonne and per euro
Harm per tonne and harm per euro are both computed. Neither is shown.
Harm per tonne of this material is defined for 2 years, 2024 to 2025: the years for which the model holds harm and world production of it has been ingested.
Both are counts of people divided by a quantity, from a run that has no uncertainty interval and no backtest yet, and nothing of that kind is published before session 21. What this page can say now is whether each is defined, and on what basis.
Which products use it
Semi-finished and finished products whose bills of materials reach this material, through every intermediate step, and how much of it one of them needs — losses included.
| Product | Needs |
|---|---|
| Copper
semi-finished product |
1.00 kg for one kilogram of refined copper cathode |
| Lithium-ion battery pack
semi-finished product |
71.6 g for one kilogram of assembled lithium-ion battery pack |
| Lithium-ion cell
semi-finished product |
86.3 g for one kilogram of lithium-ion battery cells |
| Printed circuit board assembly
semi-finished product |
214 g for one kilogram of assembled printed circuit board |
| Electric car
finished product |
54.4 kg for one midsize battery-electric car of 1,769 kg |
| Laptop
finished product |
121 g for one laptop of 2,706 g, the average of 16 disassembled models from 1999 to 2011 |
| Petrol car
finished product |
34.4 kg for one midsize petrol car of 1,385 kg |
| Smartphone
finished product |
5.67 g for one smartphone of 135 g, the average of 12 disassembled models from 2004 to 2015 |
Quantities, not harm: how much of the material the product’s chain requires. What that carries is not shown.
Sources
| Release | Retrieved | Checksum |
|---|---|---|
| usgs_mcs · MCS2026-20260206 | 2026-09-29 | 582a0aa231aea53d… |
U.S. Geological Survey, National Minerals Information Center, Mineral Commodity Summaries data release — MCS2026-20260206, retrieved 2026-09-29 from https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/file/get/69837e43b66b01367d7ec7c7?f=__disk__d3%2Fac%2F84%2Fd3ac8466552946c5e8caa2c2c6338d9e1aff655d. Licensed under Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal (public domain dedication) (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).