‘Gather round boys and girls and listen
To the tale of the giant stone eater
and how the earth was ravaged
during the years of the great stone shortage…’
The opening lines of the song ‘The Tale of the Giant Stone Eater’ by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band (aka SAHB). SAHB was one of the most unconventional rock bands of the 1970s. I saw them live in their home town of Glasgow at the height of their fame. The music ranged from avant garde progressive rock to experimental jazz. The lyrics from this song sound as if they were lifted from a book of Edward Lear’s nonsense verse – ‘a giant stone eater’ and ‘a great stone shortage’.
Wind forward to the present day and the words seem less fantastical. Worldwide increase in population and urbanisation is indeed bringing about a great stone shortage. There is a long term decline in the permitted reserves of land based sand, gravel and crushed rock and the use of marine sand and gravel together with recycled materials and industrial and mineral waste as aggregates has increased. There is even a black market in it.
Many of us think of supplies of sand, and its larger cousin gravel, as infinite making it hard to believe that something as commonplace could be valuable but like everything else – water, oil, minerals etc we are going to have to start thinking about it.
One partial solution is the use of recycled plastic as a building material which would help us establish a more circular economy and clean up the plastic waste strewn about the planet. But no new plastic please – for the sake of the climate hydrocarbons should be left in the ground.