A civilization built on sand

 

If you didn't know or didn't think about it, sand is one of the world's very important and heavily used natural resources.

And now, we're running out of it.

This is turning into a serious issue.

Here's an article to consider.

Building on sand

"According to UNEP, sand consumption has tripled in recent decades and is steadily growing at a rate of 6% annually. As demand grows, mining frontiers expand, coastlines deepen, rivers widen, and environmental and social harms worsen. As discussed by Bisht and Martinez-Alier in a Commentary in this issue, damages including riverbank erosion, diverted river flows, polluted groundwater, degraded wetlands and ecosystems, endangered fisheries, compromised agricultural practices, and threatened livelihoods, are persistent and widespread, often with devastating consequences. As an example, along the Mekong River, where sand is extracted at a rate of 40 million tonnes each year, riverbank erosion has contributed to the destruction of five villages. Although the properties of marine sand are less ideal than riverine deposits, coastlines are also being increasingly dredged, in some cases encroaching into marine protected areas. In the absence of good governance and regulation, sand mining is leaving other societal scars: violent gangs in South Africa, the sand mafia in India, and beach battles for sand in Kenya, are just a few examples of societal unrest triggered by the sand mining industry (see this month’s Q&A for more on the conflicts and challenges associated with illegal sand mining)."

And there could be a developing "sand gap".

"However, fully closing the sand value chain and maintaining a circular economy for sand will prove challenging should demand continue to exceed supply. Should a circularity gap persist, continued extraction of virgin sand will be required to meet demand. In this issue, Zhong and colleagues investigate the likelihood of a sand circularity gap. Using the construction sector as an example and assuming continuous technological progress to optimize concrete recycling and reuse, the authors show that despite a five-fold increase in the supply of material from the built environment, massive population growth and inertia within the sand value chain mean an 11 gigatonne circularity gap will still exist in 2060."

Like I said, could be a serious issue. Time for an entrepreneur to jump on this.  We don't want these to be history.