sand mafia

This is the group of people who operate in a black market for the kind of sand used in making concrete. Not all sand will do, which makes the right kind of sand precious.  Building in the twentieth century relied heavily on concrete so that suddenly the quantities of building sand required were huge. In Australia one of the places where we had the right kind of sand was Kurnell. By 1990, when sand mining was stopped, 70 million tonnes had been removed, leaving the peninsula structurally weakened and exposed to storms that threaten to break through into Botany Bay. There are other sources of sand in Australia but there is always a tension between the sand miners and the environmentalists.

Around the world there has been a tendency for unscrupulous people to grab sand where they can find it, often in developing countries where there are less controls on their activities.  As prices surge for this increasingly scarce commodity, so do the evils associated with the sand mafia.