If only there was an alternative.
What if we replace vulcanized rubber with a metal ring 🤔Maybe it could also run on some kind of metal street, to further reduce friction? 🤔
we could probably manage traffic much easier if switching was controlled vs. random drivers…
While we’re at it, maybe we could install some powerlines to provide the vehicles with electricity. That way they could run on renewable energy.
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We could call those super-cars “pods” and make millions in investor money!
Or! We propose that their are specific stops where local business could thrive, etc. - Maybe we can simply be funded by governments?
We could put shops at these stops—shop stops! We could also put them within walking distance of houses. Make ‘em really big—I think Japan tried this experiment for a while.
Guys what if we just used trains
Nonono, blockchained AI powered pods!
Pods taking you to the train?
How are the poors supposed to see my wealth?
First Class, and Business Class train tickets.
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Guys I just moved to a city and you’re not gonna believe what they have here.
This would also reduce the need for lithium!
Sounds like it’ll be rough on the road, but I’m willing to try it! /s
I miss the trains of NJ and NYC so badly, this part of Texas fucking sucks with public transportation. Losing access to a car here has you flirting dangerously close to homelessness. Which is also why I’ll usually give a ride to anyone who asks around here.
To make sure it doesn’t destroy the road we could put metal in them also…
Delightfully devilish, Seymour.
I see where you’re going. We should all switch to steel tracked Abrams tanks! /jk
We make the tyres solid and the road rubber!
wait, no, damnit
Naah. Propellers!
Geez, here is another issue for which we’ve known about for 40 or so years that requires “urgent Action” for the past 40 years already
Wake me up when we finally do something
Boomers have categorically chosen apathy in favor of their own self interests since 1970. By the late 90s, they were a wrecking ball.
I disagree. People who live their entire lives being relentless bombarded by consumerist propaganda and pro-capitalist disinformation are not truly free to vote against it, nor were they given the chance. Al Gore cared more about the environment than Bush, but he was still a capitalist that supported car dependency and the military industrial complex.
So you’re absolving “Generation Me” of ever having to think for themselves? The same generation that could have educated themselves for less than the price of new car, and simply chose not to because a high school diploma was enough?
Millennials were just as heavily, if not more propagandized, and yet, as a cohort, we have skewed far from Baby Boomers (ie Millenials are killing x), while retaining the ability to be critical of the systems we have inherited. We are also far more educated and far more in debt. All as a result of Boomers subsidizing their own welfare on the backs of their children and grandchildren.
Baby Boomers collectively failed upward, soaked up benefit after benefit while telling themselves that they deserved their station in life, and then pulled up every ladder behind them.
So, hard disagree.
Which is why replacing First-past-the-post voting is so important. We need to have more then two options.
Democrats believe in democracy right? What’s the hold up blue states?
Given that Gore actually won the election it’s arguable that his concessions towards climate change, that it was real for a start, was the reason the election was close enough for him to lose the election. Voters loved the comforting lie over the hard truth then and they still do.
Especially given the yahoo Trump wants to appoint that doesn’t believe in climate change even in 2024 is pretty damning of our ability to do anything about it.
Jimmy Carter told Boomers to put on a sweater and they kicked him out of office.
Most probably simply didn’t know. A lot has to do with policies made by politicians that did know. Don’t pretend to be better, you would have done the same back then with the information you had. Remember, no internet.
lol, ok.
Despite your unfounded assumption, I’m old enough to know what it was like living pre-internet. Information was there, for those who chose to seek it out. Boomers, on the other hand, are the living definition of Dunning-Kruger. So no, they don’t get a pass. They chose to remain ignorant and uneducated, and when they gained any advantage, they made sure that those who came afterward would NOT. That’s not just a lack of awareness, it’s mean-spirited and selfish. Which fits “Generation Me,” to a T.
Well, no.
I am from the generation after the boomers but I grew up right before the Internet exploded onto the world and i can tell you that you would never see that sort of information unless you were looking for it. I know people love to shit on boomers, hence boomers being an insult word these days, but many simply couldn’t know better.
Hell, I didn’t know and believe me, I was (and still am) the kind of person that loves to read new things STEM. I had subscriptions on scientific magazines and I do remember reading articles about it being anything, scientists already knew about car tired being a problem, but it didn’t go beyond some reports. The general population didn’t know and pretending that they could have and should have known is simply disingenuous.
If you were alive at that time then you too know that it wasn’t that easy.
You might as well just take the long nap.
No ones gonna do anything.
We’re gonna keep wringing our hands about it, desperately shout time is running out…and watch time run out, then shrug our shoulders and go “Welp, nothing we can do about it now”
Got the vasectomy already. I’m all set to become the most unreasonable person in the chaos wastes.
We need to convince billionaires to care. They are the ones who hold all the real political power.
nah, guilliotines exist and are very convincing.
we dont actually have to take orders from them.
they dont care about anything but their money and the bunkers where they think they’ll hide during the coming man made disasters
convince billionaires to care
Nah, just get santa to solve our crisis
More realistically like 15 years, but, yeah, same difference in the end.
Yeah no, I’ve seen reports back in the early 90s about this in the Netherlands where they saw microplastics.ftom.tires being a huge problem
K
If only there was a highly efficient mode of transporting people that didn’t use tires. Ah well, nothing can be done I guess.
Yes, imagine if there was a fast and safe way of transport. Something like made to run on steel bars in order to reduce friction. I don’t know. I’m just imagining, I watch too much science fiction.
My city’s metro system uses rubber tyres, :(
I imagine it’s still orders of magnitudes better than everyone driving their own car in.
Same with busses. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good
Technically, a subway would be easier to build a microplastic containment solution than applying the same to endless miles of roadway. Using metal wheels is probably still the better option though
subways are only economical in big cities though.
No one is building a subway in my town, would be waaaaay to expensive. they couldnt even keep a tram system going
I was agreeing with your sentiment that rubber subway tires are still magnitudes better than cars, realistically, buses are probably less microplastics per person moved as well if the route has decent ridership.
Brisbane? Their metro is literally a bus 😂 the council are so proud of it too.
Our public transport in Vic leaves much to be desired but at least we have a well developed tram system that reduces the number of tyres in the collective fleet.
We did just outlaw e-scooters which was necessary because the infrastructure and community education wasn’t there and it was dangerous. But long term e-scooters do serve a place in a less car reliant community. Bike infrastructure investment is decades behind what it needs to be.
Much like everywhere, the oversized nature of “yank tanks” seems to be a large factor in every single thing wrong with cars and car infrastructure these days.
Smaller, lighter cars don’t wear through their tyres as fast 🤷
To be fair, the most efficient mode of transportation is cycling by far. I wonder if bike tires also contribute to this.
I’m sure they do but it will be way less.
The wear rate should be proportional to the weight of the system (car plus cargo and passsengers, bike plus cargo and riders), maybe with some correction factors for things that affect wear rate like knobbiness.
Since bikes weigh a couple orders of magnitude less on average, the amount of tire wear material should also be a couple orders of magnitude less.
Edit: other lemmyer said wear is proportional to weight to the 4th power and that may be correct. I vaguely recall that from school now that they mentioned it.
should be proportional to the weight of the system
It’s that really true? Wear to the roads is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight so I would never have predicted a linear relationship.
Exponential relationships are still proportional.
No they are not. That’s not what it means.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(mathematics)
Doesn’t speed/acceleration affect it? If that is the case, that’s another pro for bikes.
Assuming the material properties and physical design of the two tire types is identical, maybe
Bikes cause thousands of times less damage to streets so I wouldn’t be surprised if they also wear less.
Good point! Also much less weight.
And the size of bike tires is way less than a car tire.
They do
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While there’s no doubt tires are bad for the environment, a quarter of all microplastics seems a lot, especially since plastic is everywhere. Gladly there’s a source for that claim, a link to tireindustryproject’s FAQ… Claiming that this number is a gross overestimation. What the fuck is this article? Is it supposed to be satire or something?
I’ve seen a similar number in a lot of proper scientific sources, so this article may be bunk, but the number is correct I think.
For example this article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.171003 They claim 27,26% in China.
And this article: https://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/2024-0106.pdf They claim 24.88% in the EU and state it’s among the biggest if not the biggest contributor to microplastics.
I’m all for debunking stuff, but about a quarter seems to be the currently accepted quantity to the best of our abilities to measure.
There is a bit of confusion between the amount tyres contribute into the ocean, how much into the ocean and waterways and how much in the environment as a whole. A lot of it ends up in the soil, so it doesn’t contribute to plastics in the water, but still in the environment.
That was an interesting read. I guess tyre fragments (and industrial pellets) are just way bigger than the other big offenders, which would explain why they represent such a huge portion of the total mass, and why they are filtered out “easily”. Overall it seems to me that we really need to categorize the different microplastics better, as the current definition (anything plastic 5mm and under) seems a bit too large, and with all the mix ups, you can always blame something else.
Bear in mind that the denominator is plastic pollution. Most plastic waste does not directly pollute the environment. If it is not recycled then it goes to landfills or incineration. Not ideal, but at least the damage is contained. (The bulk of ocean plastic comes from the rivers of poor countries without proper waste management.)
The issue with tyre microplastics is that it’s all but impossible to channel the waste. It’s the same with synthetic fabric: just washing it creates pollution that’s really hard to control.
(The bulk of ocean plastic comes from the rivers of poor countries without proper waste management.)
This might be true for places nearer to shore, but studies have found the great Pacific patch to be mostly discarded fishing gear by weight.
Yes I’ve seen this factoid too, but I struggle to see how it could be true. We’re comparing theoretically non-disposable kit from individual boats with the output of a large number of massive rivers in countries with populations of hundreds of millions (in particular Indonesia and Philippines) and a terrible habit of dumping trash in waterways. The amount reaching the ocean must by definition be huge.
Of course, the main problem with discarded fishing nets is not that they are plastic but that they destroy the ecosystem by design. Maybe the two harms have been conflated.
I also struggle with it, but the research I’ve seen is that it’s the majority by weight. Microplastics wouldn’t get picked up, so they’d be really hard to be weighed.
Then again, these big pieces will be shedding microplastics all the time so maybe they’re contributing to it as well.
Either way, we’ve got two problems: Plastic runoff from rivers and fishing gear disposal. And both, I think, could be solved by simply providing cash for people who can verifiably dispose of plastics. Check out some nets and floats and line, check in a certain amount and you get money back. Because people are greedy and stupid we need to incentivize cleaning things up.
Agreed. Great idea.
So then isn’t it 1/4 of a meaningless number? It seems like the specific impacts mentioned in the article (zinc,6PPD) are more relevant.
Tyre dust vacuum car, just add HEPA filter:
Filtering clothes washer wastewater is even easier.
Yes the washer wastewater should be easy in theory. But to filter the really small particles you’d need an expensive HEPA-equivalent filter that has to be regularly changed. Needless to say, none of this is happening in practice.
Filtering tyre dust is always going to be a haphazard proposition. This interesting contraption notwithstanding.
I’ve read arguments that typical plastic pollution never really wears enough to become micro plastics. Not that it’s ok, just that it stays in macro pieces
The other big offender are synthetic textiles btw.
Those reusable grocery bags made from recycled plastic? Disintegrates into dust eventually. And in your household to while it does so.
Use either natural fiber or nylon(more durable and by default, PFAS free).
I use a 40L messenger backpack for my groceries with a cotton bag inside for anything that doesn’t fit.
And on the other hand, growing cotton uses a lot of water. And wool comes from animals.
What actually is the greenest material to make garments of?
I think hemp would be the best material for clothes, but in most places it’s still an illegal plant.
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Cotton and wool can at least be returned to the earth naturally. Cotton can be grown places where water shortages aren’t an issue.
Personally the greenest option for me is trying to buy clothing made from nature textiles at a second hand store. I also wear what I own until it is basically rags, if a garmet gets a hole or a stain it becomes work clothing for when I’m doing dirty work. Obviously everyone on the planet cannot do that, but as it stands we already waste tons of clothing with fast fashion and many garmets are only worn a handful of times before being thrown away or even never worn or sold at all before becoming trash.
Someone already suggested hemp, but there is also other fibres like linen.
At the end of the day clothing would not be an issue at all, if clothes were made to last and worn accordingly. Unless you work in blue collar jobs, the wear on clothes is minimal and there is no reason why a set of shirts shouldn’t last you a decade.
Watch half the people in this sub completely scroll past your comment ignoring the fact that they are contributing to being insane amount of microplastics in our blood currently
Y’all don’t stand for shit
I watch you accusing me of the same thing in the other comment, since you probably scrolled past my username. Hypocrite.
My basement Is a nudist resort. good thing no one can see through the egress windows!
You have to wipe those off once in a wile.
This is also yet another reason SUVs are bad: bigger tyres, higher weight, more wear, more pollution.
It’s also another reason to have lower speed limits: less friction, less wear, less pollution.
You want trains because they are good for the environment.
I want trains because chugga chugga choo choo.
We are not the same.
Why not both?
I learned recently that speed limits are determined by studying the speeds driven and setting them at the 85th percentile.
So what we can do to lower speed limits is to find a place they’re doing a traffic study and repeatedly drive over them at very low speeds.
We can lower the speeds driven by putting bushes right next to the lanes. They increase perceived speed.
What if we wrapped the tyres in bags to contain all the dust?
Paper bags, obviously
They’d be easiest to recycle.
Can we take the tyres out of the environment?
There’s nothing out there. Just water, fish, and 200 tons of crude oil. And a fire. But nothing else.
Sure, just put them in bags.
Action won’t happen. In fact, we’ll increase the amount of pollution!
This is the way
The factory must grow.
Ahhh ups this is reality. Better don’t over do it.
That’s on top of all the brake dust cars spread.
A little asbestos never hurt nobody
(Edit: Nvm. I just looked it up, brake pads no longer use asbestos, which is cool at least)
Brake pads are also moving away from copper. Little improvements over time
Trains.
Trains
Trains
Trains.
Trains
Trains
Trains.
Trains
Planes
And Automobiles!
NO.
Autonomous pods!
NO.
Good lord that is the silliest thing I have seen in a loong time. And I’ve seen some silly fuckin things
Title: “Quora User Re-invents Trains” 🚲 + 🚆
so, basically, drive on three wheels and the problem’s solved?
If all you bike owners drove unicycles we wouldn’t be in this mess
WULRUS WULRUS WULRUS
But electric cars will fix everything. Thats what electric car manufacturers said!
The only thing I see amerikans taking ‘urgent action’ on is making sure a few select convicted criminals avoid doing any prison time.
Also, we’re due for a new high school shooting record. Maybe we can break it this next time.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
We are far from good: Cars ruined walkability. Most suburbs are under constant tyre roar within a kilometer from a freeway. Stroads are hideous and biking there is dangerous.
Tyre dust went onto fields, into crops, we ate the dust, gut illness became common. Heard of gluten free? People are sick.
This would be good: https://www.quora.com/What-new-types-of-public-transport-could-there-be/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
But we let the free market lock us into a technological dead-end. Ending the market religion in state affairs would be good. Some things need a 100-year plan. https://lemmy.world/comment/10858248
I’m not arguing whether cars are good or bad for society as a whole.
I’m just saying that if the choice is between internal combustion engines and electric motors, it’s a no brainer.
Slightly better isn’t good enough.
I take your point, but unfortunately we live in the real world and we have to be realistic.
That’s why this is so important. Now that we’re finally starting to move to electric vehicles and can see a future with no exhaust and much less brake dust, that tire pollution stands out even more.
Electric cars are not here to save the planet, they are here to save the car industry.
Trains and busses, actually.
Trains seemingly solve all problems that were created by a bunch of rich people
I’ll get the rope, you keep an eye out for the sheriff Handsome Dan.
it’s not fuckbuses or fuck trolleybuses so we should care about this
Lots of things contribute to this. Vehicle weight (extra stress on the tires), wheel alignment (toe-in/out causes scrubbing which causes more wear), unmaintained suspensions (worn out shocks, struts and bushings causing the above), burnouts (obviously, but, even in winter being the guy doing a burnout on summer tires while trying to get up an icy hill or across the intersection still counts), tire compound, road design, and driving style. If we had more cargo trains doing logi instead of long haul trucks we could probably cut down on a lot of pollution both in exhaust particles and tire particles.
Yet another problem not solved by EVs
It’s actually made a little worse by EVs because of battery weight.
But the manufacturer and my government said they were eco-friendly, what do you means my 6000 pounds of steel and plastic isn’t good for the planet?
they will do anything but build proper transit infrastructure. can’t have transport market owned by the government, it would hurt profits of too many owners.
fuck you peasants!
Not with that attitude.
Not surprised but happy that someone identified this source
Unfortunately this is known since two decades or so. I have learned about it in Uni 5 years ago.
I expect that car and tire manufacturers have been lobbying against this getting more attention extensively. There is no other solution except reducing car traffic.
Reduce car traffic, or…
Tyre dust vacuum car, just add HEPA filter:
Even more road noise. No improvement to car-dependence ruining walkability in cities and bikeability in suburbs.
