Global sand trade figures don’t add up – Beneath the Sands ERC

Comparing Global Exports and Imports of Natural Sands, 2020 (Treemap visualization created with Harvard University's Atlas of Economic Complexity application online, May 30, 2023).

On March 17, more than 120 tons of sand packed into drums was loaded onto the Basle Express, a container freight ship more than three soccer fields long. The ship was docked in one of America’s major ports, Savannah, Georgia, in the Southeast region of the country.

The shipment itself was not remarkable — except for how it is emblematic of the international sand trade, highlighting the type of sand that attracts foreign buyers, the countries that are buying and those that are selling…