ours is still the Iron Age, with the total consumption of other metals adding up to a small fraction of iron use.

Consequently, even in a case that appears to be the perfect example of dematerialization, the reality is nothing but a complex form of material substitution.

Modern houses have life-spans mostly between 50 and 100 years, modern houses and commercial buildings last between just 12 and about 50 years,

Rapid adoption of transgenic varieties of the glyphosate-resistant crops introduced during the 1990s changed corn, soybean, and rapeseed farming in the USA and Canada,

agent of more.

Copper, soft and malleable when pure and easy to alloy,

Naval ships of the early modern era also provide an excellent illustration of the increasingly massive production of armaments.

and thickness of seams, but typical requirements in Europe and in the USA were between 0.02 and 0.03 m3/t of coal and my best estimate is that the global need for mining timber surpassed 20 Mm

substantial shares of newly produced metals (more than 25% of all steel, almost 50% of all aluminum) never make it into final products: