French mayor draws a line in the beach sand
The growing global sand and gravel exploitation has not spared France’s beaches either. Under what has been called the “Le Matelier project,” two companies are considering extracting about 13-million cubic metres of beach sand and gravel for 30 years, in the Gironde estuary.
800,000m3 of Sand to be Removed Close to Some of Kenya’s Most Prized Beaches
Sand could soon be sucked out of the Indian Ocean, in a 0.4 –1km strip off the Kenyan coastline. The extraction will take place from Likoni through Waa to Tiwi Area in Mombasa county – close to some of Kenya’s most prized beaches and the Diani-Chale National Marine Reserve.
The Demand for Sand is so High There are Illegal Sand Mining Operations
Sand isn’t just for beaches. The tiny grains show up in many products of the industrialized world: in the glass and concrete that build cities, in detergents and cosmetics that people use daily, and in the silicon chips and solar panels of advanced technology. But sand comes from rocks that take thousands of years to erode into fine particles, and humans are using it faster than they should.
Asilah, Morocco: A Coastal Town Seeking Modernity; By Celie Dailey
Asilah is a beautifully revived town on the Atlantic coast of Morocco whose medina is white washed every year in preparation for its annual arts festival. Outside the medina walls lapped by ocean tides, there is a craggy shore with bright green algae growing on its eroded rocks. To the north, there are wide, flat sandy beaches but to the south, cliffs and caves are found on shoreline.
Documentary ‘Sand Wars’ Highlights Local, Global Sand Crises
The environmental documentary ‘Sand Wars’ was shown at The Center for Ocean Health in Santa Cruz on Thursday, preceded by a presentation by UCSC professor Gary Griggs. As Gary Griggs and “Sand Wars” demonstrate, sand has become a valuable resource worldwide due in large part to continuous construction.
The Deadly Global War for Sand
Apart from water and air, humble sand is the natural resource most consumed by human beings. People use more than 40 billion tons of sand and gravel every year. There’s so much demand that riverbeds and beaches around the world are being stripped bare.
Sand Mining Photo Gallery
Sand Mining Photo Gallery The world’s beaches are being mined for sand for a variety of uses (aggregate in concrete, fill, beach renourishment). The practice is often very destructive and poorly managed (or unmanaged). This is a global phenomenon (Morocco, Caribbean Islands, India, South Africa and more). This theft of beach and dune sand is […]
Why Sand Is Disappearing ; By John R. Gillis
To those of us who visit beaches only in summer, they seem as permanent a part of our natural heritage as the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes. But shore dwellers know differently. Beaches are the most transitory of landscapes, and sand beaches the most vulnerable of all.
The Sand Thieves: World’s Beaches Become Victims of Construction Boom. It’s not Just Cape Verde.
Sand is becoming so scarce that stealing it has become an attractive business model. With residential towers rising ever higher and development continuing apace in Asia and Africa, demand for the finite resource is insatiable.