原材料

原材料 在工业中是“原料”与“材料”的统称，特指有形的物质，原材料一词有时也用于代指直接被记录或观测下来的资料、数据或信息，比如说采访的笔记、试验的观测结果、直接记录的口供等等。这个概念类似于文学或艺术创作中所说的“素材”。

有形原材料

原木是一种典型的原料

在工业和加工业中的概念，包括两个内容，原料与材料。原料（raw material）一般指来自矿业和农业、林业、牧业、渔业的产品；材料（processed material）一般指经过一些加工的原料；例如林业生产的原木属于原料，将原木加工为木板，就变成了材料。

然而实际生活和生产中的划分也不一定清晰，所以一般用原材料一词来统称。

分類

世界上在交易的原物料高達100多種，主要分為四大類：

• 能源：以石油、天然氣、煤炭為主。
• 礦石：以金、銀、銅、鐵、鋁為主。
• 食物：以稻米、小麥、玉米為主。
• 纖維：以棉花、石油（塑膠纖維）為主。

参考文献

• Elizabeth Kolbert, "Needful Things: The raw materials for the world we've built come at a cost" (largely based on Ed Conway, Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization, Knopf, 2023; Vince Beiser, The World in a Grain; and Chip Colwell, So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything, Chicago), The New Yorker, 30 October 2023, pp. 20–23. Kolbert mainly discusses the importance to modern civilization, and the finite sources of, six raw materials: high-purity quartz (needed to produce silicon chips), sand, iron, copper, petroleum (which Conway lumps together with another fossil fuel, natural gas), and lithium. Kolbert summarizes archeologist Colwell's review of the evolution of technology, which has ended up giving the Global North a superabundance of "stuff," at an unsustainable cost to the world's environment and reserves of raw materials.
• Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Part III, Chap. 7.