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, reports Autumn Spanne for Mental Floss. The clamor for sand is so great in fact, that organized crime has sprung up around sand mining. On the fringes of Bannerghatta National Park in southern India, trucks filled with sand mined near the protected forest attempt to sneak their loads past officials in the dead of night. Bosky Khanna reports for the Deccan Herald that park officials sized 17 trucks last weekend and fined each 25,000 Rupees (almost $400). But the demand for sand in the nearby cities is high enough that the illegal mining continues.  This problem arises because not all sand is suitable for human uses. About 70 percent of all the sand on earth is made of quartz grains created by weathering, writes Vince Beiser for Wired, which is the kind our idustries need. Concrete is the biggest gobbler of these grains — which typically come from rivers and beaches because desert sand is too fine and round to hold together well...more