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seapulse t1_j5ptluk wrote

Reply to comment by LloydAtkinson in Brazil's Lula appoints Indigenous ministers to reverse Amazon deforestation by loggiews

Don’t bricks have some amount of sand/concrete in them, which we are also facing a global shortage of? I’m the first person to protest deforestation, but there is something beneficial about a building material being farmable.

oh god minecraft has had it right all along

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Weegee_Spaghetti t1_j5qk1e9 wrote

sand and concrete shortage lmfao.

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seapulse t1_j5qoc8i wrote

Sand, however, is the most-consumed natural resource on the planet besides water. People use some 50 billion tonnes of “aggregate” – the industry term for sand and gravel, which tend to be found together – every year. That’s more than enough to blanket the entire United Kingdom. The problem lies in the type of sand we are using. Desert sand is largely useless to us. The overwhelming bulk of the sand we harvest goes to make concrete, and for that purpose, desert sand grains are the wrong shape. Eroded by wind rather than water, they are too smooth and rounded to lock together to form stable concrete.

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