6 things you need to know about sand mining

Sand is the single most mined commodity, eclipsing minerals and metals by a colossal margin. Around 85% of the material we pull up from the earth is sand, gravel or other aggregate materials. Globally our annual aggregate consumption is somewhere around 53 billion tonnes – the equivalent to every person on earth using 20kg of sand every single day.

Still sandy after all these years

When oceanographer Serge Andréfouet first saw a satellite image of the Great Bahama Bank, he knew the colors and contours were special. There are many nice seagrass and sand patterns worldwide, but none like this anywhere on Earth,