原材料

原材料 在工業中是「原料」與「材料」的統稱，特指有形的物質，原材料一詞有時也用於代指直接被記錄或觀測下來的資料、數據或資訊，比如說採訪的筆記、試驗的觀測結果、直接記錄的口供等等。這個概念類似於文學或藝術創作中所說的「素材」。

有形原材料

原木是一種典型的原料

在工業和加工業中的概念，包括兩個內容，原料與材料。原料（raw material）一般指來自礦業和農業、林業、牧業、漁業的產品；材料（processed material）一般指經過一些加工的原料；例如林業生產的原木屬於原料，將原木加工為木板，就變成了材料。

然而實際生活和生產中的劃分也不一定清晰，所以一般用原材料一詞來統稱。

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。

參考文獻

• 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.