2w ago

Car tires shed quarter of all worldwide microplastics

phys.org Car tires shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment. Urgent action is needed

Every year, billions of vehicles worldwide shed an estimated 6 million tons of tire fragments. These tiny flakes of plastic, generated by the wear and tear of normal driving, eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food. Researchers in South China recently found tire-...

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/20009882

Car tires shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment. Urgent action is needed
Electric cars are not THE solution.

Fuck Cars @lemmy.world

Car tires shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment. Urgent action is needed

phys.org /news/2024-11-car-quarter-microplastics-environment-urgent.html

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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics. @slrpnk.net

Car tires shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment. Urgent action is needed

phys.org /news/2024-11-car-quarter-microplastics-environment-urgent.html

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45 comments

That's not all. Apparently a chemical added to extend tire life (sort of good from an environmental standpoint) turns out to leach into water and kill fish, so...
- That's mentioned in the article actually
  
  Pffft. Look at this noob. What is it, your first day on the Internet? Actually reading the articles instead of reading the title and assuming.
  
  Oh, my bad, thanks
- Woah
- Yikes

Yeah, in Germany there is already a lot of pressure on sewage network operators to get it out of the rainwater (we have many separate sewer systems). And that is honestly quite annoying. Put the pressure on the polluter (car/tire industry and car drivers), not the troubleshooter.
It is also a waste of money and space. The facilities to get it out are huge and expensive. This is also naturally paid for by the general public.
- Problem is that there is no good mechanism to put pressure on polluter in this case because any additional cost will be paid by consumer. We need to develop transit, design cities and reform job market to the point where cars are just not competitive.
  Bob and Alice will be riding car if nearest mall is 10 km away and you need 1,5h to get there by bus. They also will ride car if Bob can’t rely on tram schedules or Alice have to go to the office despite working in globally distributed IT business. We need systematic approach to the problem.
  
  Put that cost pressure on then invest heavily into public transit that does not rely on tires. If you have high frequency service (at least every 20 minutes, ideally closer to 5) then relying on a tram schedule isnt really a big deal. If the tram has priority at intersections, it is much easier to stay on schedule.

Virgin rubber on asphalt
Chad steel on steel

I was unaware rubber products were considered micro plastics, I mean it makes sense, but for some reason I just never put that together
- Tires haven't been made of rubber for a long time.
- What if I told you the gum that you chew was also made from plastic.
  
  You can still buy him made of chicle.
  
  I'd be more surprised if you told me it wasn't. At this point, living in the American Dystopia, I expect anything obtainable to a Proletarian to be at least partially artificial and likely carcinogenic.
  
  I mean I don't chew gum so... Nothing much?
- It really makes you see how the petrochemical industry kills two birds with one stone here
  
  Two birds and a fish
- They're both made of long polymer chains - chains of repeating carbon-based molecules - but rubbers are synthesized in a way that makes it easy for these chains to slip past each other and spring back. In plastics, the chains are much more tangled and bonded together.
- There has been some recent investment in trying to make plant based rubber in the US again:
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelharley/2022/09/08/bridgestone-develops-guayule-shrub-as-sustainable-alternative-to-rubber-trees/

But think of the EVs! /s

Ban cars.

At this point the better question is what isn't stored in the balls.
- Oddly enough, pee.

We need flying hover cars. Imagine if we could get rid of all the cement and asphalt everywhere. Also no more traffic jams.
A sci-fi nerd can dream.
- The inherent problem of any car at all is that people should never personally need a personal vehicle worth thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to buy milk and eggs.
- And only 1000x the energy usage!
  
  And dramatically reducing crash survival rates.
- these will never be a thing. Noise
  
  Just need room temp super magnets so that the cars can "float" at a particular level of the magnetosphere. Don't worry Mlon Eusk is about five minutes away from personally cracking that physics problem and will be selling cars utilizing it for generational debt tomorrow./s
- Great idea! So long as the current safety laws for aviation are followed. That would disqualify most people from flying and dramatically reduce the number of personal vehicles in use.
- Nah man, we need the tubes. Hop in a tube pod and ride the tubes to any destination.
  
  We can move the tubes more efficiently by making them large enough for many people, then chaining the various tub- hold up we invented trains again
- We need a strict speed limit. 30mph should be enough for everybody.
  No chance this will ever happen though.
  
  No chance Louis XVI would have given the people of France a decent standard of living either. Things change when enough people can no longer tolerate how they are or how they are going.
  
  honestly even that is significantly too high anywhere near where people live, what i'd go with is a default limit of 30km/h and a 60km/h limit on motorways, which should be constructed more like railways are: sparingly and with safe crossings (ideally grade-separated).
  30km/h is enough to go a pretty generous distance in an acceptable amount of time, certainly enough for even the sprawliest urban areas, and the motorways extend how far you can go in an acceptable amount of time without significant downsides.
  This is largely what the netherlands does and it works well.
- do you genuinely imagine this working? like, you see what people are like driving cars on the ground, right? do you think people would actually manage to not get drunk and think it's a great idea to reenact 9/11?

Too this was posted by a fascist.
- If you are referring to me, then present a proof, since the burden of the evidence lies on the accuser.
  If you mean the link or crosspost author, jfc, ever heard of something called critical analysis?

45 comments