The Ekko Score standards allows glass - as a product, or as packaging, to be claimed as a renewable resource. Glass is just over 70 percent sand, that is melted at 1700°C and mixed with soda ash and limestone. The sand that is used to make glass is silica sand - silicon dioxide or quartz, and it is most often sourced from deserts.
Desert sand is the purest quartz because there is limited opportunity for other minerals deposits to add to the grains, unlike from coral or shell in sea sand. Quartz is also very tough - hard enough to grind most other minerals out when the wind blows sand around in the desert. This is typically why desert sand is usually very smooth and with a high percentage of quartz.
It is therefore pretty reasonable to claim glass sand as a renewable resource. But it turns out that we are actually running out of sand. River, lake and ocean sand. And there is a very good reason. Concrete.
Sand is actually the second most consumed resource on earth - 50 billion tonnes every year for concrete. The problem is that desert sand is largely useless in making concrete as the grains are too smooth. Concrete needs a rougher sand in order to interlock the grains and that sand comes from rivers, lakes, beds and beaches. And therein lies the problem.
Our insatiable appetite for concrete sand is sucking it out of ocean beds, beaches and rivers and destroying the environments left behind. The slo-mo deterioration of Vietnam's Mekong Delta is probably the world's most visual example of how sand mining systematically kills previously fertile lands and balanced ecosystems.
Legal and illegal sand mining occurs in every country in the world. India, Ireland, UK, Australia, USA, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand.
Singapore's acclaimed 'land growth' and wealth came largely came from neighbouring Indonesian islands, now threatened with rising water levels and barren fishing towns. But Singapore is not alone. There are many of these stories all over the world. Hong Kong, Dubai, Lagos, China have all added or are adding hundreds of kilometres of coastlines and artificial land masses to extend cities and build luxury resorts. All need ocean sand - millions of tons of it.
To begin to image the extraordinary size of this problem, consider this. Between 2011 and 2014, China used more concrete in new buildings and roads than the United States did in the entire 20th century. And then there is India, rising fast.
It's surprising just how little attention sand mining and sand theft gets. There have certainly been times in history when it's been campaigned against in specific places like Fraser Island in Australia years ago, but the global scale of sand mining in vulnerable ecosystems is gob smacking.
Sand is extracted using increasingly powerful dredges and in the process, coral reefs, fish and bird habitats are destroyed, fishing areas wiped out, water is muddied and polluted. Sand mining is regulated in some parts of the world, but largely unpoliced and because it's so easy to steal the stuff, there is a particularly sinister criminal element in sand mining - a sand mafia. Stolen sand is a massive global business to which many so called 'respectable' businesses turn a blind eye.
While sand is the predominant material in concrete, recycled plastic and glass are also entering the stream, with a working allowance of up to 10 percent recycled materials. While 10 percent might not sound a lot, when you are talking 50 billion tons, it is an excellent start.
This is shocking and something else I didn’t think about until my partner mentioned last night how they are constantly looking for new sand suppliers (he is in construction). First and foremost it’s another example of the need for humans to stop encroaching on the natural world - but I am also interested to know what solutions are being worked on here? It seems like such a big opportunity for use of recycled materials? How quickly can the % of recycled materials in construction increase? Tuesday, 26 May 2020