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The increasing demand for resources and the associated environmental impacts of extraction, processing, and consumption pose significant sustainability challenges from greenhouse gas emissions to land and water use. To address these challenges, it is essential to understand and manage global material cycles effectively. This presentation will introduce quantitative approaches to modelling, simulating, and evaluating global material cycles using industrial ecology methods. Combining material flow analysis, life cycle assessment, and raw material criticality assessment allows us to understand the complex interactions between human activities, natural systems, and material flows. The presentation will draw on my research experience in developing and applying innovative methods for studying mining, production, recycling, and dissipation of metal and mineral resources. The work is rooted in industrial ecology, which views human activities as part of the natural environment and seeks to optimise material and energy flows to minimise environmental impacts. Using case studies and examples, I will demonstrate how our Ecological Resource Technology group at the University of Bayreuth applies these methods to evaluate the sustainability of global material cycles, specifically focusing on strategically relevant technologies in energy, mobility, and electronics. The presentation will highlight the benefits of our approaches, such as their ability to provide a comprehensive understanding of material cycles, and their limitations, such as the complexity of data collection and analysis, and discuss future research directions for improving the understanding and management of global material cycles.