Increasing material efficiencies of buildings to address the global sand crisis

ABSTRACT There is a rapidly unfolding sand supply crisis in meeting growing material needs for infrastructure. We find a ~45% increase in global building sand use from 2020 to 2060 under a

middle-of-the-road baseline scenario, with a 300% increase across low-and-lower-middle-income regions and a slight decrease in higher-income regions. Half of this demand may be avoidable

using several material efficiency strategies in concert. International cooperation is essential for addressing vulnerabilities and inequalities. Access through your institution Buy or

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STOCKS IN CHINA BASED ON GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOMETRIC CONFIGURATIONS OF THE BUILT-ENVIRONMENT Article Open access 20 December 2023 DEVELOPMENT PATTERNS, MATERIAL METABOLISM, AND GREENHOUSE GAS

EMISSIONS OF HIGH-SPEED RAILWAY IN CHINA Article Open access 06 September 2023 GLOBAL GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS FROM RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL BUILDING MATERIALS AND MITIGATION STRATEGIES

TO 2060 Article Open access 21 October 2021 DATA AVAILABILITY This research relies entirely on publicly available data as referenced. We have also deposited them in the Zenodo repository21

in a form that can be easily used with our model code. Source data are provided with this paper. CODE AVAILABILITY The python code of the building sand model is publicly available from the

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material efficiencies of buildings to address the global sand crisis, GloBus (v1.0). _Zenodo_ https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5897264 (2022). Download references ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS X.Z.

acknowledges the support of the China Scholarship Council (grant no. 201806050096). AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden

University, Leiden, the Netherlands Xiaoyang Zhong, Sebastiaan Deetman, Arnold Tukker & Paul Behrens * Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the

Netherlands Sebastiaan Deetman * Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research TNO, The Hague, the Netherlands Arnold Tukker Authors * Xiaoyang Zhong View author publications You

can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Sebastiaan Deetman View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Arnold Tukker View author

publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Paul Behrens View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CONTRIBUTIONS

X.Z. and P.B. designed the research. X.Z. and S.D. developed the model and collected the data. X.Z. performed the analysis. X.Z. and P.B. drafted the manuscript. A.T. and S.D. contributed to

reviewing and editing. CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to Xiaoyang Zhong. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The authors declare no competing interests. PEER REVIEW PEER REVIEW

INFORMATION _Nature Sustainability_ thanks Zhi Cao and Chris Hackney for their contribution to the peer review of this work. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION PUBLISHER’S NOTE Springer Nature remains

neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary methods, discussion, Figs.

1–5, Tables 1–6 and references. REPORTING SUMMARY SOURCE DATA SOURCE DATA FIG. 1 Data behind Fig. 1. SOURCE DATA FIG. 2 Data behind Fig. 2. RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions

ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Zhong, X., Deetman, S., Tukker, A. _et al._ Increasing material efficiencies of buildings to address the global sand crisis. _Nat Sustain_ 5, 389–392

(2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00857-0 Download citation * Received: 01 September 2021 * Accepted: 02 February 2022 * Published: 24 March 2022 * Issue Date: May 2022 * DOI:

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