Name: Why The World Is Running Out Of Sand
Uploaded: 2021-05-13T12:36:37.000Z
Duration: 9 min 50 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

法助動詞 B1

You may think of sand as part of your beach vacation, but

程度の副詞

it's used for more than just sand castles. It's a commodity

If you look around you, everything is made of sand.

It's a pretty crucial commodity. And even though

sand can be found in nearly every single country on Earth,

we could soon face a sand shortage. Turns out, sand is

only second to water as the most consumed raw material

worldwide. Sand mining is the largest mining industry in the

world. And yet, it flies under the radar, largely unregulated

All of society is basically built on sand and how come

there's no monitoring on that? And how come people are ready

to kill someone else for sand in some regions?

It's used in construction, like critical infrastructure,

and President Biden is diverting a lot of his

attention to America's infrastructure. Sand is also

used in chemical production, water filtration, fracking,

and of course, glass. So, all of your windows, computers and

You know, it's literally everywhere we're driving on

it. We're sitting in it. We're looking through it. It's

absolutely extraordinary. I'm really starting to be

concerned about what happens if we don't have this anymore.

Sand use around the world has tripled in the last 20 years.

That's far greater than the rate that sand is being

One of the biggest sustainability challenges of

the 21st century simply because of the scale of the

problem. The more I learned about it, the more alarmed I

So, the world is facing a sand crisis. And that's a problem.

I know what you're thinking: Yes, sand is everywhere. How

Actually, in some places, the world was running out, and

it's such a hard concept to get your head around because

you think of coastlines and expansive deserts and just see

so much of it, that to think of it not being there is very,

It's a classic example of the tragedy of the commons. An

economic concept where everyone is incentivized to

keep consuming a natural resource, even if it ends in

overconsumption, and ultimately, the total

So is it a crisis or not? And that's one of the hard things

with this topic, that it's a problem that manifests in very

different ways in very different places. So, I bet

you if you were in a community where sand mining is going on

like this is not a surprise to you at all.

I grew up in Bangalore in South India. As I grew up, I

constantly read reports about rivers being decimated because

of sand mining. And at the same time, I saw hundreds and

hundreds of sand filled trucks flying up and down the road in

the city of Bangalore. That was when the city was being

transformed to the Silicon Valley of India basically. A

construction boom happening all over and all that sand was

Construction has caused a steep increase in demand for

sand. And, a lot of sand is being extracted from oceans

It's not just shortage in the market at shortage in the

natural environment that has to be talked about. The

concern is that there's literally not enough sand on

coastlines in a context of rising sea levels and

Sand crafted by water is more valuable than desert sand

eroded by wind. That makes desert sand to smooth it

doesn't bind together as well as other types of sand. Sand

is sourced and extracted from seabeds, coastlines, quarries,

or rivers is more angular, so it locks together. And, that's

important because this kind of sand is a key ingredient in

And concrete is made up of 65 to 75%, sand and gravel.

Then there's glass, sand, gravel and rock crushed

together or melted down to make the glass used in every

Glass is about 70% silica sand. So, there are very

specific types of sand that are required for specific

Even the production of silicon computer chips uses sand, but

extracting sand can damage the environment.

Extractions of marine sand, coastal sand, beach... beach

is the worst. And rivers is something that is leading to

For oceans... Well, imagine you scrape sand off the bottom

of the ocean. That's going to affect the microorganisms that

live in the ocean floor. That's going to affect the

fish that eat the microorganisms, and then the

fish that eat those fish. Basically, the sand removal of

affects entire ecosystem. Sand is the most extracted resource

in the world by volume, surpassing even fossil fuels.

Actually, even extracting oil and gas uses a lot of sand,

like in fracking. And yet sand has been easy to ignore.

Essentially, it's invisible in our minds and in the way that

we manage the resource. We don't think about it like a

strategic resource. And yet it is everywhere in our societies

And as a result, we're wasting these resources. And in 2019,

we produced this report, which was submitted to the United

Nations Environmental Assembly, and it was used for