Stories

Short guided readings of the data. The globe follows the text. Every figure in a story is read from the same records as the rest of the atlas when the page is made, so a story cannot hold an old number, and each figure opens its source.

• Mined everywhere, refined in one place

  For most materials in the atlas, refining is held by fewer countries than mining. One material goes the other way, and for some the comparison cannot be made.

  7 steps

• The cobalt journey

  Where cobalt is mined, what customs data record leaving the DR Congo, where it is refined, the export quota now in force, and the point where the open data ends.

  5 steps

• Chokepoints at sea

  How many ships pass a few narrow sea passages now, against the same week a year earlier. The atlas cannot yet say which minerals travel through them.

  5 stepsReads current figures from IMF PortWatch

• Where recycling could change the map

  How much of EU demand recycling meets today, what EU law asks for, and how concentrated refining is. The data covers the EU only, and the story says what it cannot show.

  6 steps