Looting of the sea: the great sand theft – ABC

Sand mining, Mizoram, India (by Karen Conniff CC BY-NC 2.0 courtesy of Water Alternatives Photos via Flickr).

It is the most demanded raw material after water. It is used to make concrete, chips, detergents, paints… and even artificial islands. The big cities are hungry for sand and to satisfy it, the world’s beaches are being plundered….

Can the circular economy help the Caribbean win its war against waste? – Mongabay

On the way to the Playa Quehueche in Livingston, on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala (by Ken MacElwee CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

For decades, a graveyard of corroding barrels has littered the seafloor just off the coast of Los Angeles. It was out of sight, out of mind — a not-so-secret secret that haunted the marine environment until a team of researchers came across them with an advanced underwater camera…Startling amounts of DDT near the barrels pointed to a little-known history of toxic pollution…but federal regulators recently determined that the manufacturer had not bothered with barrels. (Its acid waste was poured straight into the ocean instead.)…