OPINION: Digging for dirt

When I was a kid growing up in Westfort, sand was a big part of my life and playing in the sand was one of life’s pleasures.

Sand came in many forms (boxes, piles, lots) and most backyards had an area reserved for young diggers, scrapers and Tonka truck drivers.

Sometimes we built dirt roads and raced our toy cars around the sand pile and some days we would dig deep holes and fill them with water.

It seemed like important work at the time but it never occurred to us that the stuff we were digging, moving and throwing at each other was a valuable resource.

And we never even imagined a day when all the sand would be gone and criminals operating illegal sand mines would kill to protect their dirt stash.

But believe it or not, that’s exactly what is happening on beaches, on the ocean floor and in river beds all over the world.

I’ve been learning about a global sand shortage that is driving up dirt prices and encouraging the dirt mafia to get involved in illegal sand mining.

It is also causing ecological and economic hardship as sandy beaches around the world are scraped away illegally and shipped thousands of kilometres away.

I wasn’t surprised to discover that water is the most consumed resource on Earth, but I was a little shocked to find what is in second place – sand.

It is used in the manufacture of products like glass, plastics and metal alloys but most of the available sand is being sucked up by a global construction boom.

More than 80 per cent of all human structures are made from concrete - sand and gravel are two of the main ingredients.
Building an average sized house requires the use of 200 tons of sand – a hospital takes 3,000 tons.

Every kilometre of finished highway requires 30,000 tons (you do the math) and to build a nuclear reactor, you will need 12 million tons of sand.

Besides construction, some countries use vast amounts of sand to expand their territory by reclaiming the sea.

Singapore is the top user of sand in the world – it has increased the size of its territory by 20 per cent since the 1960s with sand purchased from neighbouring countries.

The artificial islands constructed off Dubai used up more than 600 million tons.

The UN estimates global consumption of sand to exceed 40 billion tons per year which fuels a legitimate $70 billion industry and countless billions more illegally.

That’s why everybody with a shovel, a wheelbarrow or a donkey is stealing sand from beaches, ocean floors and riverbeds to sell for profit.

Slowly but surely over the years these dirt entrepreneurs, legally or otherwise, have stripped the world’s beaches, riverbeds and sea floor of all sand.

Five-star resorts must import sand every spring to repair the beaches.

As the world supply of sand diminishes, rising sea levels and violent storms are scouring coastal beaches and making “beach re-nourishment” even more imperative and costly.

Some resorts are resorting to artificial sand made from recycled glass (no sharp edges) to replenish their devastated beaches.

On your next tropical vacation, the sand filtering between your toes might be old ketchup bottles and brown, beer bottle glass beads.
We can exist without sand but this is another example of man’s greedy compulsion to exploit the Earth’s limited resources – even the very ground beneath our feet.

I don’t know if little kids still play in the sand but adults sure do and they won’t stop digging until all natural beaches and sandboxes are extinct, empty and forgotten.