Comment by maury91
5 years ago
In Sardinia (Italy) we have a similar problem, many tourists steals beach sand as a souvenir. The number of tourists that does this is so big that some beaches got smaller, and goverment has choose to put a stop by giving huge fines and possibly jail time.
I'd be interested to see the distribution of amounts of sand stolen per person.
If 10% of people steal a shot-glass of sand as a momento from a beach 100 meters X 100 meters which has 1000 daily visitors, the sand goes down 1cm every hundred years, which is waay slower than sealevel rise.
If people start taking sackfulls home, the balance changes quickly though.
usually, there are pictures in the articles with images of the stolen sand.
The majority of time is not a shot-glass, but more like a bottle.
Here some pictures:
https://www.ilmessaggero.it/photogallery_img/MED/31/07/44531... https://www.repstatic.it/content/nazionale/img/2019/04/26/11... https://filecdn.nonsprecare.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/FU... https://www.gelestatic.it/thimg/xdU2x4YwGfNp33fZp0ePMCBh38M=... https://trekking.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/copertina1-10...
A shot-glass is around the tolerable level because it's the amount of sand you find in your shorts when you are back home from the beach.
Whatever department manages the beaches should insert themselves into this practice to moderate it. Sell pretty glass display bottles that are more attractive than a bag or soda bottle, but happen to be tiny. This wouldn't work if it inspired enough people to start collecting to outweigh the savings from intervention.
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A classic example of how boring governments are. All they can do is ban, fine and imprison. If I were the governor I'd just import the sand from Sahara and include the expenses (as well as some reasonable profit) in the beach entrance fee. They are going to have to import it anyway, why not just accept the reality and turn the problem into business?
I hope you are joking. The sand that is stolen is not just any sand, people steals that sand because it's different, for example, some sand is pink, some is made by small quartz stones, some is red, some is black. Replacing it with generic Sahara sand will result in a "new" beach, and is not what we want. We want to stop people from taking the sand, not make a business out of it.
A spoiler: The people won't stop. No matter how hard you ban.
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> If I were the governor I'd just import the sand from Sahara and include the expenses
It's much easier to prevent it than to fix it by transporting tonnes of sands from africa to wherever the sand is needed. Being able to pay for something doesn't magically make it a good idea. Plus I'm not sure westerners coming to Africa to take sand for their beaches will be well received.
Sahara sand is different from beach sand. It's very fine and when it gets wet it feels more like paste then sand. It's why the UAE has to import sand for construction projects even though the cities are literally built on top of it.
The UAE is also nowhere near the Sahara desert, for what it's worth.