Owens on sand shortage (The New Yorker)

Question 1

Sand isn’t just sand, it turns out. In the industrial world, it’s “aggregate,” a category that includes…

Answer 1

gravel, crushed stone, and various recycled materials.

Question 2

What is the world’s second most heavily exploited natural resource, after water, and for many uses the right kind is scarce or inaccessible?

Answer 2

Natural aggregate

Question 3

Pascal Peduzzi, a Swiss scientist and the director of one of the U.N.’s environmental groups, told the BBC last May that China’s swift development had consumed…

Answer 3

more sand in the previous four years than the United States used in the past century.

Question 4

What are sand mafias?

Answer 4

Criminal enterprises that sell material taken illegally from rivers and other sources, sometimes killing to safeguard their deposits.

Question 5

In the United States, the fastest-growing uses include…

Answer 5

the fortification of shorelines eroded by rising sea levels and more and more powerful ocean storms.

Question 6

A mile-long section of a single lane of an American interstate highway requires how many tons of sand?

Answer 6

thirty-eight thousand tons.

Question 7

A typical American house requires how many tons of sand?

Answer 7

More than a hundred tons of sand, gravel, and crushed stone for the foundation, basement, garage, and driveway, and more than two hundred tons if you include its share of the street that runs in front of it.

Question 8

In some applications, natural aggregate can be replaced by or supplemented with recycled materials, but the possibilities are limited. And efforts to reduce consumption are complicated by the fact that many environmentally desirable products and activities depend as heavily on aggregate as environmentally undesirable ones do:

Answer 8

solar panels are made from silica and silicon; wind turbines are manufactured with foundry sand; autonomous electric vehicles need roads and highways, too.