A symposium taking place at Dutch Design Week later this month will discuss the rapid depletion of the world's sand reserves, which could leave supplies of the high-quality sand used in the glass industry exhausted within 20 years.
The "sand crisis" threatens to destabilise the global glassmaking and concrete industries, with the latter using an estimated 25 billion tons of sand and gravel every year.
On top of this, up to 50 billion tons per year gets trapped behind the growing number of dams around the world, which prevent rivers carrying new deposits downstream.
Meanwhile illegal sand mining is destroying fragile landscapes around the world.
"We may not run out of it, but it will become increasingly scarce and expensive," according to British geologist Michael Welland, whose 2009 book Sand explores a material widely considered to be limitless but which is now emerging as a threatened resource. Sand is one of the world's most important raw materials
Welland is among the speakers at the symposium taking place in Eindhoven on 27 October, which will discuss the granular substance.
"Sand is the most consumed resource on earth after freshwater," said Dutch design duo Atelier NL, who have organised the symposium.
Besides glass and concrete, sand is also a critical ingredient in computer chips, meaning it is one of the key raw materials of the modern world.
"As the urbanisation of our modern world expands, so does the need for this unassuming...