The environmental impact of concrete is not limited to climate change:
In 2016, world cement production generated around 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 - equivalent to 8% of the global total
Mining the sand and gravel needed for concrete has devastating effects too:
Global sand trade boom fuels conservation fears https://t.co/YZ0IIhTAKo— Financial Times (@FT) December 30, 2019
Increasing demand for the world’s most-used natural material, sand, is fuelling mining in fragile natural habitats and prompting a growing number of countries to ban exports.
The construction industry’s use of sand, gravel and crushed rock outstrips total global consumption of all fossil fuels and metals combined, when measured by weight, according to the OECD.
The sheer scale of sand and gravel extraction is creating what the UN Environment Programme has called "one of the major sustainability challenges of the 21st century".
"The amount of infrastructure coming down the pipeline for urbanisation is so gargantuan that unless there are sustainable solutions . . . [sand mining is] going to have more and more of an impact on our rivers and coastlines," said Richard Lee from conservation organisation WWF.
Here's just one example:
How the scramble for sand is destroying the Mekong https://t.co/KkvXokrzek— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) December 19, 2019
A crisis is engulfing the Mekong River, its banks are collapsing and half a million people are at risk of losing their homes.
"Extraction is happening at absolutely astronomical rates, we're having an industrial-scale transformation of the shape of the planet," says river scientist Prof Stephen Darby at Southampton University.
His studies on the lower Mekong show its bed has been lowered by several metres in just a few years, over many hundreds of kilometres, all in the quest for sand.
