Photo Courtesy: pexels
This is crazy. Do you know, more than oil, we use SAND more in our daily lives next to water and air the most.
Its used to make a lot of things like food products, glass, silicon chips and so many things that we use everyday
75% of Concrete is SAND while the rest are made up of cement and water. Not only that, the amount of concrete you need to build a house is on average 200 tons and if it’s a commercial property, it would roughly be 3,000 tons and one mile of highway uses about 15,000 tons of concrete.
Given these statistics, worldwide there is a HUGE dearth for river sand or as they call “marine sand” over in the West.
But one thing is for certain, while a few years ago, river sand was cheaper than the MSAND but not anymore. MSAND is the cheapest and its priced competitively among its manufacturers, suppliers and vendors, it is almost breathtaking in its scope and potential for the foreseeable future.
What was the reason for the change? It is the concern for the environment that stands out the most among our populace. The legislators realized the change in the mood and started making laws towards making exploiting river sand to be unlawful in many states across India.
This changed the mood quickly among those who are not only responsible for producing it, but also the end-consumers as well. Consumers are aware of the fact that, M-SAND could be obtained at higher quality and at lower cost than before for their construction projects.
This is not only in India, but we can see governments across the world have begun to regulate and restrict sand mining. This did NOT make the problem go away overnight.
In India, the businessmen-drivers-criminal nexus is still thriving for Black Market sand where it is estimated to generate at least $2.3 billion per year and employing almost 7,50,000 people (mostly from impoverished areas) for diving in the river to obtain the sand. Illegal sand mining has destroyed entire islands in Indonesia and other island nations.
There is absolutely no solution other than M-SAND as an alternative source of river sand. Its cheaper. It is readily available and its not potentially harmful to the environment and not only that, government with all its wisdom has started giving licenses to own Quarries and start new Crusher Plants.
Every little step helps. Let us hope it continues.
