HC directs Govt to spell out stand on illegal mining of beach sand minerals thehindu.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thehindu.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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“The nature of the crisis is we don’t understand this material well enough.”
It makes up the concrete of our houses, the tarmac of our roads, the glass in our windows and the silicon chips in our phones.
But sand, a building block of modern life that sits at the heart of a destructive and sometimes illegal industry, is in increasingly short supply and nobody knows how soon it will run out.
Sand is the most used material on the planet but also one of the least well monitored. Unlike most other commodities, policymakers only have rough estimates of how much of it is used each year. A landmark report from the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) in 2019 had to rely on data for cement which sand and gravel are mixed with to make concrete to land on a ballpark figure of 50 billion tons.
Sand crisis: Mafias thrive as shortages loom
Demand for construction sand is rising faster than supply, pushing even countries in the Middle East to import it from as far away as Australia and Canada.
Mining so much sand is destroying ecosystems and fueling violence
It makes up the concrete of our houses, the tarmac of our roads, the glass in our windows and the silicon chips in our phones.
But sand, a building block of modern life that sits at the heart of a destructive and sometimes illegal industry, is in increasingly short supply and nobody knows how soon it will run out.
Sand crisis: mafias thrive as shortages loom msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.