[1] The World Is Slowly Running Out Of Sand - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMLYLcniXIc
But, big picture, nothing on this planet is "non-renewable". Sand, for example, can be manufactured. As can petroleum, coal, clean water, etc. In fact all those products can be produced from the waste of the materials they are replacing. We can chuck a bunch of plastics into a pressure chamber and, with enough energy, regenerate the original petroleum products.
And that's the real crux: energy. We don't make our own sand and fossil fuels because it would cost too much in energy. But if we had more abundant sources of energy, the cost would go down, and more manufactured materials would become viable.
Our crisis is not that we'll run out of resources. We have plenty. Our predicament is a lack of energy sources. We make up for it by consuming energy our planet has stored, in the form of fossil fuels and other so-called "non-renewables". The solution is to transition ourselves away from this handicap. We need to have more sustainable and abundant sources of energy. That pretty much amounts to solar, as there are no other truly sustainable sources of energy.
So the real solution has not much to do with using less "non-renewables" and more to do with improving our abundance of solar energy.
If you have enough energy to make X, then you'll always have X.
But usually you don't.
But really what I was trying to get at was that our focus, with respect to the environment, is perhaps in the wrong place. We focus so much on reducing use. Really our focus needs to be on how we can get _more_ energy.
It's like in a business. Don't focus on the cost centers, focus on the profit centers. How can we drive _more_ business rather than making the existing business more efficient. For a growing company that's usually the best advice.
So why, as a growing species, are we optimizing our energy usage? Screw that. Let's get more energy! Let's blanket the land with solar panels so we have enough "fuck off" energy to do whatever the hell we want. In particular, enough energy to get into space and build a Dyson sphere so we can get even more energy.
Imagine if we took all the money and time invested into optimizing energy usage, and instead had spent it on solar panels?
It's all really counter to public opinion. Environmentally conscious people love their LED lights. I do too. But I also love optimizing systems, and optimizing systems is often not what's smart for a business.
The article mentions, among other things, thieves who steal sand, sell it, and bribe police to look the other way. While that's the state of affairs, lowering the cost of energy is beside the point.
cost = energy-intensive manufacturing + lots of shipping
It wouldn't prevent this crime because it's never going to be as cheap as going to the river and filling up a truck.
cost = a short drive + a few bribes
Technology is absolutely not the solution to everything (although sometimes it helps a lot).
It is obvious that we wouldn't have the same problems.
I think we should adopt living in smaller houses, which are built out of locally available materials, instead of cement concrete. As far as I know, concrete buildings do not have a lifetime exceeding 40 years, where as older construction techniques do give us longer lasting buildings.
Local concrete used in India include a mixture of slaked lime, honey, water chestnuts, rice husk etc. - e.g. [1] Seems to last a couple of centuries, at least.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bara_Imambara#Building_composi...
The longevity may simply be a fortuitous consequence, though a highly significant one.
(A topic I should add to my research list.)
The foundation of the house I'm living in was probably made with beach sand (1908 construction). One wall that gets wet frequently is turning to dust.
Or what is your point? That we use too fine grained sand to build our cities and then let future generations deal whith grumbling skyscrapers?