Earth Is Running Out of Sand, Spurring a Cutthroat Black Market
Earth Is Running Out of Sand, Spurring a Cutthroat Black Market
Sand is the second most-used resource after water, but it’s unregulated and ripping environments apart.
Isn't the seabed, i.e. 70% of the world surface, covered in sand? Along with the obvious fact that sand could be manufactured. This is less about the world running out of sand and more about the world running out of CHEAP sand
If I recall, in order to use sand for industrial stuff, it needs to be pretty rough and really only beach sand is good enough. The only kinds of sand are too smooth.
Easily-overlooked but serious problem.
The article talks about the possibility to turn sand usage into some sort of circular economy, but that would mean recycling sand in some way. We can and definitely should recycle glass, but we can't exactly recycle concrete used in buildings (except in the uncommon instances where buildings are torn down for whatever reason). So, one way or another, we need to develop a sustainable substitute for sand itself. (Sidenote: Can hempcrete help alleviate this problem, at least?)
The last remaining sand mine on Minjerribah (worlds second largest sand island) closed in 2019. It will take a long time to rehabilitate the sand mining sites, they've left "scars" on the island. IIRC some locals were concerned about the loss of jobs. It will be interesting to see if this will be resumed in some form, if sand really is becoming a rare commodity.
Isn't sand just like, tiny crushed up rock? Why can't we just make more sand? I know with stuff like water the process of turning something that isn't water but contains water can be costly but i feel like we definitely should have machines by now that turn rock into sand
It's probably too expensive. It takes energy to make sand.