Illegal beach sand mining, near Tangier, Morocco. Photograph: © SAF — Coastal Care
Excerpts;
A new building about to take shape in Boston’s Roxbury area could, its designers hope, herald a new way of building residential structures in cities…
Read Full Article, Science Daily (03-05-2019)
Concrete: the most destructive material on Earth; Guardian UK (02-27-2019)
After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on the planet. But its benefits mask enormous dangers to the planet, to human health – and to culture itself…
Concrete, or Beaches? World’s Sand Running Out As Global Construction Booms; The Ecologist (05-09-2017)
A crucial component of concrete, sand is vital to the global construction industry…
Demand for sand: the largest mining industry no one talks about; Inhabitat (05-23-2019)
The world’s largest and perhaps most destructive mining industry is rarely discussed. Approximately 85 percent of all material mined from the earth is a simple and widely available resource: sand. Because it is so cheap and readily available, it is mined by everyone from guy with a shovel, to multi-million dollar machine operations…
The hidden environmental toll of mining the World’s sand; Yale E360 (02-05-2019)
Sand mining is the world’s largest mining endeavor, responsible for 85 percent of all mineral extraction. It is also the least regulated, and quite possibly the most corrupt and environmentally destructive…
Riddle of the sands: the truth behind stolen beaches and dredged islands; Guardian UK (07-01-2018)
The insatiable demand of the global building boom has unleashed an illegal market in sand. Gangs are now stealing pristine beaches to order and paradise islands are being dredged and sold to the construction industry…
Sand Wars, An Investigation Documentary, By Award-Winning Filmmaker Denis Delestrac (©-2013)
“Sand is the second most consumed natural resource, after water. The construction-building industry is by far the largest consumer of this finite resource. The traditional building of one average-sized house requires 200 tons of sand; a hospital requires 3,000 tons of sand; each kilometer of highway built requires 30,000 tons of sand… A nuclear plant, a staggering 12 million tons of sand…”—Denis Delestrac -(©-2013)
