No, the choice between safely biodegradable tires vs petro tires is a separate discussion from better pubic transit to reduce the need for those tires.
A few things I’m going to point out though.
It’s not the run off into streams and into drinking water that’s the likely point of intake. It’s the air we breath, epically in cities or along major highways where people are intaking the plastic.
Don’t assume that just because something is natural means that it is completely harmless. Plenty of natural compounds are toxic.
The family of compounds that we need to be concerned about the most is PFAS. It is a synthetic, but it’s because it’s a forever chemical and doesn’t metabolize out of the body.
The first and easiest step would to remove the PFAS and create safe alternatives. It’s a weird Catch 22. It needs to be durable and long lasting so it doesn’t blow out on the highway, but it also needs to be weak and biodegradable so organic systems can break it down. EVs, even the EV busses, need even more durable tires as the torque is higher.
Even if you got wide spread train adoption, people still need to get to those trains and bikes still have rubber tires. Busses use less rubber compared to cars per person, but it’s still not zero.
Connecting mircoplastic from runoff seems like a wasted effort. What do you do with it afterwards? Burn it? Try and recycle it? Plastic is hard to recycle. Better to keep the most harmful plastics from being created in the first place.
I don’t see how this matters. It’s not whether that materials exist, but how much wear away into microplastics. Aside from the occasional kid screwing around, bicycles probably are not.
Connecting microplastic from runoff seems like a wasted effort
For sure it’s better that it not be created, however it is. Even if we were able to stop using it, there are mountains of goods already using it and goods already disposed of, leaching pollution into our air, our water, our food, our environment. Even if we were able to find away for tires to stop emitting microplastics, we have billions of tires that will continue to do so.
Mandating that everyone in the public can no longer buy the huge variety of clothing styles that can only be achieved with synthetics would cause a giant uproar of opposition and would be almost impossible to get passed into law.
Demand changes what is available. My local men’s fashion place now sells Hawaiian shirts made of natural fibres. Cotton underwear has always been available
Now I can easily get my brightly coloured clothes in reasonable fibres I’ll have nothing that loses micro plastics on me today
Though I may ride my bike and bike tyres have the same problems as car tyres though they wear much less
Plus mandate a filter on clothes washers. I’m sure there would be an entire subculture of reactionaries dedicated to removing them but most people wouldn’t
Not even NO clothes and tires, just clothes and tires that aren’t made of plastic
It’s much easier to switch to clothes not made of plastic then it is to replace what we make tires out of.
cough train
I mean, yes. But that’s a different discussion.
Unfortunately not. Is there even another choice for tires that won’t shed microplastics? I’ve never read of one
That being said, someone was proposing an affordable way to filter runoff from highways that we should at least try
No, the choice between safely biodegradable tires vs petro tires is a separate discussion from better pubic transit to reduce the need for those tires.
A few things I’m going to point out though.
It’s not the run off into streams and into drinking water that’s the likely point of intake. It’s the air we breath, epically in cities or along major highways where people are intaking the plastic.
Don’t assume that just because something is natural means that it is completely harmless. Plenty of natural compounds are toxic.
The family of compounds that we need to be concerned about the most is PFAS. It is a synthetic, but it’s because it’s a forever chemical and doesn’t metabolize out of the body.
The first and easiest step would to remove the PFAS and create safe alternatives. It’s a weird Catch 22. It needs to be durable and long lasting so it doesn’t blow out on the highway, but it also needs to be weak and biodegradable so organic systems can break it down. EVs, even the EV busses, need even more durable tires as the torque is higher.
Even if you got wide spread train adoption, people still need to get to those trains and bikes still have rubber tires. Busses use less rubber compared to cars per person, but it’s still not zero.
Connecting mircoplastic from runoff seems like a wasted effort. What do you do with it afterwards? Burn it? Try and recycle it? Plastic is hard to recycle. Better to keep the most harmful plastics from being created in the first place.
I don’t see how this matters. It’s not whether that materials exist, but how much wear away into microplastics. Aside from the occasional kid screwing around, bicycles probably are not.
For sure it’s better that it not be created, however it is. Even if we were able to stop using it, there are mountains of goods already using it and goods already disposed of, leaching pollution into our air, our water, our food, our environment. Even if we were able to find away for tires to stop emitting microplastics, we have billions of tires that will continue to do so.
Easier than either to just stop making them.
Switch back to natural rubber?
Mandating that everyone in the public can no longer buy the huge variety of clothing styles that can only be achieved with synthetics would cause a giant uproar of opposition and would be almost impossible to get passed into law.
So would anything that makes world better.
Demand changes what is available. My local men’s fashion place now sells Hawaiian shirts made of natural fibres. Cotton underwear has always been available
Now I can easily get my brightly coloured clothes in reasonable fibres I’ll have nothing that loses micro plastics on me today
Though I may ride my bike and bike tyres have the same problems as car tyres though they wear much less
Sure, but a gradually increasing tax on the production any plastic containing fabrics would help naturally phase it out.
Plus mandate a filter on clothes washers. I’m sure there would be an entire subculture of reactionaries dedicated to removing them but most people wouldn’t