By 2020, human-made mass surpassed Earth's total living matter
A 2020 Nature study found that the total weight of human-made materials—dominated by concrete, bricks, asphalt, metals, and plastics—caught up with and roughly equaled the mass of all living matter on Earth, around 1.1 teratonnes in use, with plastics weighing about twice the mass of all animals. The crossover hinges on accounting choices (e.g., whether rock and soil moved to make materials are counted) and highlights humanity’s outsized planetary footprint, not a moral judgment.
