Our everyday lives are filled with objects made of copper, gold and silver. Many of these objects have been extracted from colossal mines all around the world, such as the Gobi Desert in Mongolia and the mountains of Indonesia. These mines are huge in every sense, from their actual dimensions, to the gargantuan quantity of elements they produce, to the amount of money they make. These are the world's largest active mines.

El Teniente, meaning The Lieutenant, is nestled in the Andes mountain range in Chile, 140km south of Santiago. It is said to be the biggest underground copper mine in the world.

The scale of the underground labyrinth of tunnels is phenomenal. El Teniente boasts over 3,000km of underground tunnels - about the distance from Moscow to Barcelona - and almost 1,500km of underground roads.

El Teniente produces copper in vast amounts, creating 475,000 tonnes in 2016.The mine is owned and operated by Codelco, the Chilean state enterprise and is the largest of Codelco's operations. The mine has its own railway system, which delivers ore to the surface where it is then crushed and processed before being transported to a smelter.

Known as the Super Pit, the Fimiston Open Pit is located off the south-east edge of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. It is 3.5km long, 1.5km wide and over 600m deep.

It produces 800,000 ounces of gold per year, which accounts for about 8% of Australia’s gold output.

The mine is built on an area of volcanic and sedimentary rocks and the goldfield is between 2.6 and 2.9 billion years old. Its epic proportions means the mine remains a popular tourist destination in Australia.

Located in Boddington, 120km from Perth in Western Australia, Boddington Gold Mine produces copper as well as gold and is the largest mine in Australia.

It is a vast operational site, employing 2,000 people and annually producing 80 million pounds of copper and 787,000 ounces of gold.

Commercial production only began in 2009 but the mine reached two million ounces of gold production by August 2012.

Lying in the vast expanses of North-Eastern Nevada lies Goldstrike, the largest gold mine in North America and the third largest gold mine in the world.

Gold was first discovered here back in 1962 but it wasn't until 1975 that the precious metal was first extracted from the mine. The Goldstrike complex consists of three distinct mines: the large Betze-Post open-pit mine, and the Meikle and Rodeo underground mines.

It is owned and operated by the world's largest gold mining company Barrick. Since Barrick acquired Goldstrike in 1986, it has produced approximately 42 million ounces of gold.

Mongolia's financial outlook changed dramatically when the Canadian-based Ivanhoe Mines developed the gold-copper ore deposit in 2001 in the Gobi Desert. Since then, the Oyu Tolgoi mining project has become the largest financial undertaking in Mongolia's history.

Oyu Tolgoi is a combined open pit and underground mine and consists of several ore bodies containing copper, gold and silver. It is being developed as a joint venture between Turquoise Hill Resources (a subsidiary of Rio Tinto) and the government of Mongolia.

In Calama, 1,650km north of the capital of Chile and 2,870m above sea level, lies Chuquicamata, a vast open-pit copper and gold mine owned by Chilean state enterprise Codelco.

How big? It measures in at 5km long, 3km wide and 1km deep, and is reported to be the biggest mine in the world by excavated volume. In 2015, the mine produced 308,625 metric tonnes of fine copper.

The Chuquicamata mine appears in the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries. In the movie, Che Guevara is depicted visiting the mine with his companion.

It was back in 1936, when a Dutch geologist climbed the 4,100m high Mount Carstensz, in Papua, Indonesia and noticed green streaks on the rocks. These turned out to be rich gold and copper deposits.

Today, this mammoth site is one of the world’s largest active mines, and often touted as the biggest gold deposit and the second largest copper deposit in the world.

It is mostly owned by PT Freeport Indonesia (subsidiary of Freeport-McMoRan).The mine has been in production since 1988 and approximately $12 billion has been invested in operations and infrastructure so far.

The undisputed largest active mine in the world is Bingham Canyon Mine, an open-pit copper mine in Salt Lake City, Utah. It covers nearly three miles and is 2.5 miles wide and 0.6 miles deep.

Owned by multinational corporation Rio Tinto Group, it has been in production since 1906 and is believed to have produced more copper than any other mine in history.

The mine also produces gold, silver and molybdenum and is known as Kennecott Copper Mine by the locals.

The mine was made an official historical landmark in 1966 and survived a huge landslide in 2013. As a consequence, the company installed an interferometric radar system that can monitor the ground's stability and predict future landslides.