This is the total weight of everything humans have created since 1990

Dec 6, 2021

In 2020, the amount of human-made mass, or anthropogenic mass, exceeded for the first time the dry weight (except for water and fluids) of all life on Earth. Image: Unsplash/ Justin Eisner

Bruno Venditti

Writer, Visual Capitalist

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Future of Consumption is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Future of Consumption

Visualizing the accumulation of human-made mass on Earth

Concrete attribtues to 549GT of mass. Image: Visual Capitalist

Concrete is the second most used substance in the world, after water. Image: Visual Capitalist

Human-made mass could become triple the total amount of global living biomass by 2040. Image: Visual Capitalist

Have you read?

Discover

What is the World Economic Forum doing about plastic pollution?

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.