The World’s Biggest Miners

By Anna Fleck – Statitsta

China was the world’s biggest extractor of domestic materials in 2023, according to the UNEP’s Global Material Flows Database. The country extracted a total of 34.2 billion tonnes of materials, including biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores, and non-metallic minerals. This is more than four times the amount of either of the next two largest extractors: India (8.03 billion tonnes) and the United States (7.98 billion tonnes). India overtook the United States for the first time to become the second largest extractor of these materials in 2023.