They took the most sand

January 23, 2024 1:54 AM

Organized crime is mining sand from rivers and coasts to feed demand worldwide, ruining ecosystems and communities. Can it be stopped? Maybe, like so: Sandy Fingerprints Trace Supply Sources
posted by chavenet (18 comments total)

Every time I think greed can't imagine a new hellscape, I turn the corner and...
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 1:57 AM on January 23 [5 favorites]

Uggggggghhhhhhh

And yet the "Related Stories" links were a little heartening, in that they push beyond "those bad people are bad" thinking into interrogating how to productively think about things, at least a little bit: "Moral Righteousness Can Worsen Conflict" and "Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real" and "Doctors Do Racist Things to Patients. Here Are Seven Ways They Can Stop" - this third one is interesting because a) it helpfully assumes that nobody _wants_ to do racist/bad things and offers actual help instead of just blaming people.

But still... ugggggghhhh. It's so hard to focus on solutions when this is just so horrific. Those poor animals. Being disgusted at people is the opposite of helpful, I know, but I understand the temptation to just scold people and yell about how awful they are. They are us, though.
posted by amtho at 2:26 AM on January 23 [7 favorites]

When this was a plot point in Barry I thought it pushed the show right to the edge of believability (even for Barry). That show needed to be leavened with some zaniness, after all.
posted by notyou at 3:40 AM on January 23 [8 favorites]

Yet sand mining is the world's largest extraction industry because sand is a main ingredient in concrete, and the global construction industry has been soaring for decades. Every year the world uses up to 50 billion metric tons of sand, according to a United Nations Environment Program report. The only natural resource more widely consumed is water. A 2022 study by researchers at the University of Amsterdam concluded that we are dredging river sand at rates that far outstrip nature's ability to replace it, so much so that the world could run out of construction-grade sand by 2050. The U.N. report confirms that sand mining at current rates is unsustainable.

Hmm... our species, which is biologically dependent on shelter for our survival, is running out of the main component with which we make shelter. Which would explain why we have a global homelessness crisis. Materials are becoming too scarce and expensive to build cheap homes, so our poorest are living outdoors.

I'm thinking that's a bad sign.
posted by MrVisible at 5:18 AM on January 23 [8 favorites]

“I think there’s an appetite for this,” he said.

I mean sure, if there's no crawdads to be found.

More seriously, I can see this technology making a big difference on sand theft, but only if it's paired with regulatory teeth.
posted by Not A Thing at 6:50 AM on January 23 [2 favorites]

concrete is a pretty stupid material to build housing out of. it's durable, but: it's carbon dependent, it doesn't insulate for shit, it's heavy & requiring massive footings, requires heavy equipment to install it, and it is really not very maintainable. wood is frigging everywhere, and when you build things out of it, it's a carbon sink. mid-rise buildings have been be made out of wood and can be again, and even if you do go concrete for the mechanical spine/elevator shafts, that's still a big benefit. laminated beams can be extremely strong while still being light-weight, providing much more flexibility in architectural design. it's a little upsetting that concrete is so entrenched in our architectural languages these days
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:52 AM on January 23 [17 favorites]

I know I'm not going to see 80 story urban condos built out of wood, but 4-8 story "missing middle" blocks of flat are what we need vastly more of anyway, and those are totally doable in wood. i suspect there's a lot of zoning and nimbyism (even see some of it in Ask recently) in the way of construction of midrise residential buildings that could totally be done with wood.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:54 AM on January 23 [12 favorites]

Maybe not 80 stories, but 20+ story mass timber buildings are going up all over the world.
posted by rockindata at 7:21 AM on January 23 [8 favorites]

mid-rise buildings have been be made out of wood and can be again, and even if you do go concrete for the mechanical spine/elevator shafts, that's still a big benefit.

These people are working on pushing the limits of wood for construction. Probably never going to hit 80 stories, but they're trying to push the limits of the material upwards.

Their building is also part of a district heating system based on burning waste from a nearby sawmill.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:21 AM on January 23 [9 favorites]

A Nobel prize for the first engineer to develop a machine that will pick Arabian sand (too fine to use for anything) up by a conveyor belt and drop it into a chamber that's lit by concentrated sunlight, so the grains semi-melt into glass and coalesce with each other to make sand that's usable for construction purposes.
posted by ocschwar at 7:34 AM on January 23 [8 favorites]

You still use concrete for foundations, even when building in wood
posted by Zalzidrax at 7:37 AM on January 23 [7 favorites]

Lumber and wood-and-other-vegetable-fiber paneling (plywood, MDF, etc.) are not a very durable construction material in tropical environments.

A lot is being tone to increase the use of wood in temperate environments, including new treatment that enables 4 and 5 story buildings to be wood-framed, and work to substitute wood for some of the applications of concrete in taller steel-framed buildings.
posted by MattD at 7:50 AM on January 23 [2 favorites]

You still use concrete for foundations, even when building in wood

Decreasing use of a resource from unsustainable levels to sustainable levels still solves the problem of using up the resource at unsustainable rates, even when still using the resource more than zero amounts.

(I don’t actually know what a sustainable rate of sand use would be and whether only using concrete for building foundations would be a significant enough decrease. But “but you’re still using some!” isn’t necessarily a gotcha.)
posted by eviemath at 8:25 AM on January 23 [10 favorites]

A Nobel prize for the first engineer to develop a machine that will pick Arabian sand [and] make sand that's usable for construction purposes.

Two Nobel prizes if the same machine sucks up seawater and makes low-cost potable water.
posted by pracowity at 8:59 AM on January 23 [6 favorites]

You still use concrete for foundations, even when building in wood

For homes, it's not required across most of the US, as pier and beam homes (the foundation is piers of stone or concrete with wood above it) have existed for a long time. It's debatable if it's even a great material to use for foundations of homes. Other buildings? Yeah, it's probably the best foundation material.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:19 AM on January 23 [2 favorites]

Obligatory... [SLYT]
posted by Chuffy at 10:03 AM on January 23 [1 favorite]

I remember this being a theme in an episode of Elementary like a decade ago.
posted by my-username at 10:26 AM on January 23 [1 favorite]

I remember this being a theme in an episode of Elementary like a decade ago.

NoHo Hank, in Barry, comes to mind. Organized crime and sand with a Cristobal statue...
posted by Chuffy at 1:17 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]