Why We Should Worry About Our Demand For Sand

Canadians that speak the Inuit dialect have more than 50 names for snow and even more for ice. In Northern Quebec, “matsaaruti” is the snow that ices a sleigh’s runners and “aqilokoq” refers to softly falling snow. Meanwhile, your “piegnartoq,” is the snow that keeps your sled moving. As for ice, if it’s filled with holes, it is called “auniq.”

Similarly, there is more to sand than one word can convey.

Sand Demand

One handful of sand might be composed of crushed marble while another could be quartz, shells, and bits of plastic. Sand could be more or less firm. How much water it absorbs will vary. And yet, the only other name for sand is aggregate.

Volleyball Sand

Beach volleyball usually cannot be played on a beach because the sand is too firm. When players dive into it, they tear hamstrings and break bones. With volleyball sand, the texture lets players bury their ankles. The sand’s specifications prohibit fine particles like silt and clay. It drains so readily that building a sand castle with it is impossible. Beach volleyball promoters submit their sand for approval with the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball. And, according to The New Yorker, just one tournament needed 1,360 tons of sand.

Sand Use

At this point from beach volleyball, we could leap to the other kinds of sand we use. No, it’s not desert sand. The wrong shape and too smooth, our huge supply of desert sand is useless. Instead, we need angular sand from river beds, banks, and floodplains from which we have been able to create 5,237 square miles of artificial land. But also, we need high-purity silica sand for solar panels, smartphone screens, and computer chips. We need sand for our water filtration and septic systems. A typical home has more than 100 tons of sand in its foundation, driveway, and windowpanes. One mile of a single lane road needs close to 38,000 tons of sand. The UN estimates the world uses 40-50 billion tons of sand annually. According to the BBC, China has used more sand during the past 10 years than the U.S. used throughout the 20th century.

Our Bottom Line: Reverend Malthus

Perhaps one of the first environmentalists, Reverend Thomas Malthus told us in 1798 that population grows geometrically while resource production expands arithmetically. He thought that resource prices will rise and supply will become increasingly inadequate.

I’ve summarized what Malthus predicted:

The Reverend could have been talking about sand.

My sources and more: A recent Economist article and the BBC reminded me it was time to return to sand. Happily, it takes us back to what (always interesting) David Owen said in the New Yorker six years ago and also to this BBC science report. But then, it also connected us to snow.

Please note that several of today’s sentences were in a 2017 econlife post on sand.