Has the metal 'consumption' of consumers risen over the last, say 30 years (arbitrarily chosen number - anything on a similar scale would be interesting).
I'm interested in both the amount that is 'held' (this laptop, my knives and forks), and the amount that is thrown away/recycled.
Our World in Data provides statistics on global annual primary production of metals:
They also provide population data over the same time period. If we combine the two data sets, we can see the global per capita metal production:
To answer your question about the last 30 years or so; the data shows that metal production per person declined slightly during the 1970s, but from the mid-1980s onward it has been growing.
The United Nations Environment Programme published a report on Recycling Rates of Metals in 2011, which gives estimated global recycling rates. It's a comprehensive review of disparate data sources, so rates are given in ranges. Here's where each of the metals in the chart from Our World in Data fall:
Note that Tungsten, with the lowest recycling rate, is also produced in the lowest quantity aside from gold.
Unfortunately, the UN does not provide historical data on recycling rates. However, given that recycling rates in general are increasing globally, it's safe to assume that metal recycling rates have also increased over time.
This means that while some primary production accounts for replacing metals that are not recycled, this "replacement factor" has decreased over time, meaning the increase in primary production is mostly related to increase in demand.
I was curious about specific metals, so I put together this chart showing the per capita change since 1985 for each specific metal:
From this data, we can see that the growth is lead by:
Are you talking in terms of use and disposal per person, or life cycle of metal?
The difference being are you interested in how much metal a person consumes and disposes of? Or how much metal gets to land fill and averaging that out over the population?
Not all metal disposed of will make it to land fill.
I suspect you're question is the first (disposal per person), which I would say (without researching figures directly) yes it has gone up.
The reason being, in general, society is consuming (and disposing of) more, which would imply that the metals contained within are also being disposed of more.
Examples:
These two items until recently, largely went to landfill when done.
Have you tried the Worldbank Databank - they may have some overall stats of metal consumed by nation. ( http://data.worldbank.org )
Maybe also The World Beaurea of Metal Statistics - http://www.world-bureau.com/
Depends on how you count "consumption". For example , is the 50+ tons of steel in the typical mono-pod for each commercial windmill averaged for the people in that electric grid, or for that country, or for whole earth ? Also the great majority of structural metals are recycled ; is that deducted from the "consumed" ?
