A dredger shoots sand onto a beach in France. The boat pumps sand from offshore sand bars before shooting it back onto beaches in an effort to fight against erosion. | Image: NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP via Getty Images
People are dredging an alarming amount of sand from the seafloor, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned today. An average of 6 billion tons of sand are taken from marine environments every year, according to a new global data platform from UNEP.
That comes out to more than 1 million dump trucks of sand extracted per day to make concrete and glass, build new artificial bea...
