Sustainable Sand Substitutes in the Construction Industry in the United States and Canada: Assessing Stakeholder Awareness

The United Nations has declared a global sand crisis, called for reduced sand consumption, and proposed solutions to address the crisis, including adopting sustainable substitutes for sand. The construction industry is a major consumer of sand, yet a recent study found a very low level of awareness by stakeholders of the crisis. The purpose of this study is to assess the familiarity of construction industry stakeholders with 27 sand substitute materials, grouped into five components that emerged from a factor analysis. Data were collected using a survey designed by the authors. Respondents consisted of 156 construction industry professionals located in 35 US states and 7 Canadian provinces. Stakeholders were classified according to a framework considering the level of power and interest of each stakeholder in sustainable construction projects. Hypotheses of no differences in awareness for two types of stakeholder groups were generally supported. First, no differences were found for decision makers responsible for ordering sand vs. non-decision makers. Second, for professional roles, academics were more familiar with some substitutes than those in other roles. The article concludes with implications for research and practice, with recommendations on how to increase awareness of sand substitutes among stakeholders in the construction industry.