Today’s consumer goods—from your morning coffee to medications to household items—emerge from intricate industrial webs, with many of their ingredients and materials crisscrossing industries and leading to shared environmental and social impacts. Who would have thought that coffee could be tied to deforestation in the Amazon, that daily supplements might contain fish oil from overfished stocks driving some species toward endangerment, that photographic film could be made with gelatin from animal hides and bones, or that life-saving blood thinners might rely on ingredients derived from pigs?
The Web of Origins (WOO) Project stems from this very curiosity, a personal exploration into the origins of everyday products and their ingredients. It began as a quest to discover what things are made of, where they come from, and how seemingly unrelated items are connected. Ultimately, it serves as a reference point for addressing and improving issues tied to supply chains, sustainability, ethics, and social justice.
WOO's ambition is to catalog a wide range of products and their sources, exploring the entangled web of industrialisation and seeks to reveal how products and industries are directly or indirectly linked to social and environmental impacts, from ethical concerns and human well-being to ecological sustainability. By making these connections publicly visible, WOO promotes transparency and empowers people to make informed choices and encourages a deeper understanding of the world’s interconnected industrial systems and supply chains.
weboforigins.com is committed to providing truthful, unbiased, evidence-backed data based on existing and available information. While still in its early stages, the database will continue to grow and expect ongoing expansion and improvement over time.
This is currently a personal project, but I'm open to collaboration and partnerships, please feel free to reach out if you have any ideas, feedback, or simply want to say hi.
If you find value in this work, or simply want to support the journey, any contribution — whether a $1 coffee or a few words of encouragement — truly means a lot and helps keep the project going. Your support helps cover costs like domain, tools, hosting subscriptions, and other essentials (plus the much-needed coffees for late-night research) — until the website becomes self-sustaining.
Thank you.