19 Feb 2021 / 13:14 H.
By Marco Hernandez, Simon Scarr and Katy Daigle
Feb 19 (Reuters) - From Shanghai to Seattle, the world's cities are built on massive amounts of sand.
It's in the cement and concrete that make up the bulk of buildings. The glass in the windows of those buildings is made with sand, too, as is the tarmac on the roads around them.
(Open https://tmsnrt.rs/3pCXVcZ in an external browser to view an interactive graphic on sand mining.)
Sand is the planet's most mined material, with some 50 billion tons extracted from lakes, riverbeds, coastlines and deltas each year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.