To begin planning for this future, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issued a detailed report in April 2022 outlining 10 strategic recommendations (see the first table) for sand supply chain stakeholders (see the second table). People will want-and need-homes, infrastructure, and livelihoods that directly or indirectly involve sand. Sand is extracted from the environment with irreversible impacts, the scale of which will be magnified as the world prepares for an additional 2 billion people within the next century. “The crisis that exists around sand is mostly a crisis of sand sustainability, not of availability.” “The second challenge is that easily usable sand resources are running out in many regions.” “One is that it has caused enormous consequences in the environment,” he explained. “The use of sand is now faced with two major challenges,” said Xiaoyang Zhong, a doctoral student in environmental science at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “Sand is the most mined solid material on Earth, and we’re using more and more sand as we’re becoming more and more people,” said Mette Bendixen, a physical geographer at McGill University in Montreal. Most sand pours into the construction industry, which in turn pours much of it into concrete. In fact, the ubiquitous material is the second most exploited natural resource on Earth, after water. Smartphone screens, wine bottles, and porcelain toilets share a surprising ingredient: sand.
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