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Car tires shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment
- qprofyeh 2y agoI truly hope this encourages manufacturers to build smaller, lighter, and slower cars.
- revscat 2y agoWhy on earth would you think that that would ever happen?
- fractallyte 2y agoBecause governments could mandate it. Yes, we're at the stage now where democracies need to become far more dictatorial, otherwise their populations will continue mindlessly along the path of 'Tragedy of the Commons'.
- tim333 2y agoYou don't even need dictatorial. Just tax breaks and the like for small light vehicles and penalties for large heavy ones.
- SoftTalker 2y agoThe only thing that will do that is regulation, either mandating the types of cars we can buy, or taxing the kinds of cars we don't favor. People in the majority prefer large, powerful cars, given the choice. And those cars already cost a lot, so any strategy of price increases to discourage them will have to be significant. This is why most people in Europe drive small, economical cars. Big cars are heavily taxed, and so is the fuel they use.
- trimethylpurine 2y agoI drove smaller cars in Europe simply because bigger cars don't fit in many places. I don't think it has much to do with price. Small streets mean fewer drivers. That means your overhead demands that you charge more per customer since you have fewer of them. All that said, smaller roads mean smaller trucks which means more trucks more often which means more tires.
- sigzero 2y agoThe vast majority of people would not buy those.
- tmnvix 2y agoDepends entirely on price.
- fordfordford 2y ago[flagged]
- bdangubic 2y agoexcept there aren’t any affordable smaller cars anymore…
- _carbyau_ 2y agoI see it as less a masculinity problem and more a "common view of physics" problem. IE it's less about masculinity and more about the perception of "winning a crash". Cars can pass all the safety standards they like but the common view is a multi-ton ladder chassis truck keeps the kids (and themselves, their loved ones, friends...) safer than the small city car (containing others). So stupidly sized trucks are desirable... The only way out I think is regulation. Otherwise the "outsizing" will continue.
- rootusrootus 2y agoThat's quite the hot take, more worthy of Reddit than HN. Pickups are super useful. Especially if you live in a place that does not have narrow roads, and if you have a family to tote around. It's in many ways the modern equivalent to the luxury barges of the 70s. Plus, modern trucks are frequently as efficient as a mid size sedan from 10-15 years ago, which is pretty wild. Some of them, like my Lightning, are more efficient than pretty much any car which uses gasoline. Lastly, 80K is a lot even for a truck. The vast majority are more like 40-50K. 80K is a top trim, brand new, no discounts price.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
- chuckwolfe 2y agoA slower car? They already make plenty of them
- porphyra 2y agoI really wish we could buy a Citroen Ami in the US, which is a small, light, and slow (28 mph top speed) electric car for city driving. Plus, it looks super cute!
- jasondozell 2y agoThe US in particular has many oversized cars. Fuel is cheap, the roads are wide and there is a general imperative to get a car bigger than others for safety and status. If this pollution could be used as a means to reduce sizes to something more proportionate to what they’re generally doing it will be a good thing.
- bix6 2y agoWe need to start making manufacturers pay for their negative externalities.
- acidburnNSA 2y agoAlso we need incentives to convince people to choose to drive lighter and smaller cars. Carrots and/or sticks should be considered. Alternatively, new tire technologies could maybe also solve the problem.
- danielheath 2y agoTyre wear is proportional to the fourth power of wheel load; reducing weight per wheel is the key here. Hiwever, taxing new tyres may be counterproductive, since encouraging folk to keep using their worn tyres is not a good outcome for road safety.
- potato3732842 2y agoTyre wear is proportional to the fourth power of wheel load; reducing weight per wheel is the key here. No, it's not. You're taking a very loose rule of thumb for road surface wear and baselessly applying it to tires. Tire wear follows the rubber the tire is made out of. Soft rubber wears faster. Once you control for that it's acceleration and braking loads (i.e. driving style) that dominate. After that is when weight starts mattering. If what you said was even remotely true then heavy vehicles would get obviously less life out of tires compared to compact cars when in reality they get about the same
- david-gpu 2y ago> If what you said was even remotely true then heavy vehicles would get obviously less life out of tires compared to compact cars when in reality they get about the same Are you assuming that the tires of heavy vehicles have the same thickness as lighter vehicles? My bike has much thinner tires than any car, and they can last ten thousand kilometers.
- 2y ago
- xnx 2y agoI'd love to see some of the tire wera data that Waymo has accumulated. Despite being heavier vehicles, I bet they do well on tire wear from no hard stops or starts, driving the speed limit, keeping properly inflated, and (I assume) optimizing driving to maintain momentum (e.g. not accelerating into red lights like I see so many human drivers do).
- ramraj07 2y agoHave you experienced waymo in SF? It actually drives faster than regular folks and brakes much more harder because of that. The speed limit doesn’t apply to the streets of San Francisco and it typically accelerates to the limit as fast as possible (especially electric).
- xnx 2y agoNot in SF, only in Phoenix. My rides seemed much less erratic than a typical Uber ride.
- fsckboy 2y agosounds about right, I'm surprised it's so low; we should probably stop doing the other things putting microplastics into the environment since they account for 3/4. tires are an essential part of most people's lives, and even city people who don't have cars rely heavily on wheeled vehicles. When I think about the plastics that I take out into the environment where I subject them to wear, I can't really think of anything apart from tires.
- hackernewds 2y agoit is not necessary though that 8 tons of energy displacement moves 60 kg individuals. we should absolutely cut down on private transit
- recursive 2y agoThat vehicle would require a commercial license.
- rootusrootus 2y agoThe lower limit in most jurisdictions in the US is 13 tons. And also, in most jurisdictions there is an exemption for vehicles used for personal recreation (e.g. you can absolutely drive a Volvo tractor to pull your enormous fifth wheel toy hauler with nothing more than a basic driver's license).
- paulryanrogers 2y agoPerhaps street cars and trains could take efficiency even further, with metal wheels.
- metalman 2y agotire dust is behind major die offs of juvinile salmon, thete are specific toxic compounds in it, and when therevare major rain events, all the dust in the ditches gets washed into rivers and streams in high enough concentrations to kill all the fish. from memory the toxic compound is some sort of biocide put in tires, to keep them from bieng eaten by ? algea? fungus? whatever, not an important detail, but an additive that can be eliminated or replaced, $$$$$$$$
- cyberax 2y ago> biocide It's an anti-oxidant, to protect tires from UV and ozone degradation. Tire companies are in the process of switching to a different anti-oxidant.
- wfhrto 2y agoI drive a lot less working from home
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoI drive a lot more now. But I preferred the old city life, taking the subway to the office instead of driving around the suburbs.
- swifthesitation 2y agoThis reminded me of an old article I read about this from `Straight Dope` years ago (2006 in fact!)[0]. > Pollution studies in the Los Angeles basin in the 1980s concluded that more than five tons of breathable tire dust were released into the atmosphere there each day, and there’s no reason to think that figure’s gone down since. [0] https://www.straightdope.com/21343778/when-the-rubber-meets-the-road-where-does-it-go https://www.straightdope.com/21343778/when-the-rubber-meets-...
- rootusrootus 2y agoFive tons sounds like a lot. But on the other hand, the Los Angeles basin sounds pretty big. (a quick check suggests it is about 1200 square miles) The AQI there looks good.
- pajko 2y agoDon't assume that the distribution is uniform.
- rootusrootus 2y agoI'm only making the assumptions that I can given what little information is contained in the original statement. We would need better quality information to make any further inferences.
- dv_dt 2y agoAqi doesn't measure this, does it?
- rootusrootus 2y agoIs tire particulate too big to show up in the AQI measurement? If so, does it fall out of the air so fast that it isn't really a problem?
- dv_dt 2y ago
- PlunderBunny 2y agoLike many efforts (effective or otherwise) to solve environmental problems, fixing this might require new tyres sold to environmentally conscious consumers initially, to prove that it can be done. Cost effectiveness comes later, paired with government regulations. I'm assuming there are currently no tyres on the market that contain nothing that degrades into microplastics, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
- david-gpu 2y agoStreetcars, subways and LRTs do not require new fancy tire compounds to stop releasing microplastics. Their brake pads can, though, although I imagine that regenerative braking helps somewhat. Bicycles are so lightweight that the amount they release is negligible compared to a car.
- PlunderBunny 2y agoAgreed, and I like all those forms of transport, and use some of them when I can. But I do have to drive sometimes (for a certain definition of 'have to' of course). We're not going to win these things by saying "just don't drive". Driving less is part of the solution, but it's not going to work by itself.
- porphyra 2y agoI wonder if rubber-tyred metros like the Montreal metro and some Paris metro lines release a lot of microplastics?
- therealdrag0 2y agoCould possibly filter it out at exhausts
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- qwerty_clicks 2y agoAnd noise pollution! Even electric cars (which are quite heavy and produced a lot of tire wear) create loud roaring at moderate to high speeds for anyone the car is passing.
- fastball 2y agoEVs have the benefit of regen breaking though, which means less break dust contributing to the pollution.
- prpl 2y agoLess than a vehicle of equivalent mass, sure.
- rootusrootus 2y agoEVs are broadly comparable to the ICEV equivalent. We're talking 10-15% difference, sometimes less, and the gap closes a bit every year. Won't be long until EVs are consistently lighter than the gas equivalent.
- jayd16 2y agoIt's really not that much heavier, less than double. A Model 3 and a 3 series BMW weigh about the same.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pcunite 2y agoWell, maybe people will stop frowning at me for wearing my wicking running shirts now.
- emmelaich 2y agoEVs are heavier but I suspect the wear is less than you might think because the braking is gentler with regenerative braking, so less wear on the tyres. Also, there's quite a bit of pollution from break pads and discs, also reduced because of regenerative braking. I couldn't find numbers though, with a brief bit of googling.
- sfblah 2y agoMy EV runs through tires way faster than my gas car.
- rootusrootus 2y agoI, too, have a lead foot. EVs are quick, and tires are the price.
- zeusk 2y agoThere’s quick ICE cars too, but they don’t weigh as much as the 100 or so kWh battery pack in EVs
- rootusrootus 2y agoTypical EVs are about 10-15% heavier than the comparable ICE. Yes it makes a difference, but only marginally. Normal drivers without a lead foot get 10s of thousands of miles from tires, just like ICE vehicles. Also, few EVs that are not pickups have 100 kWh batteries; more typically 60-75.
- zeusk 2y ago2024 Mazda3 Sedan: 3,124 to 3,395 lbs 2024 Tesla Model3: 3,862 to 4,054 lbs That's 20% heavier, and it gets worse when you look at EVs not built from ground up by legacy manufacturers.
- 2y ago
- wkirby 2y agoGenuinely curious if there are any real efforts to address this available to the consumer. In the kind of idiot who will buy more expensive tires because they shed less plastic, but as far as I’m aware I don’t actually have that opportunity.
- _carbyau_ 2y agoMaybe I have this wrong somehow but I thought that could be categorised as "wear". IE don't buy the tyres that last 1000[preferred units of measure], buy the tyres that last longer. But then you could get into "performance per unit of wear" and how that is all defined is a wombat hole of discussion.
- limitedfrom 2y agoYou would have to make some trade-offs with emissions/fuel economy though. Harder wearing compounds generally lead to higher rolling resistance, which means higher energy use per distance. I’m inclined to think that microplastics pollution might be worse than tailpipe emissions (or electricity generation pollution depending on your source)?, but it wouldn’t be straightforward. While there will probably always be uses for autos, we should encourage other methods of transport whenever possible.
- Gigachad 2y agoSteel wheels on a steel track don’t have this issue.
- rootusrootus 2y agoIn the sense that they don't emit plastic particles, sure. But trains absolutely do create metal particle air pollution. I think it would be an interesting comparison, given how often our local light rail trains operate nearly empty. If it has less than about 20 people per train car it is toting around more weight per passenger than a private vehicle with just the driver.
- 2y ago
- SubiculumCode 2y agoAssigning blame is less interesting to me than whether there are potential avenues for an alternative that both serves as tires and avoids this micro plastics issue.
- taeric 2y agoI confess I am disappointed that nobody is bothering to mention paint being the leading contributer. Guessing textiles are also higher. As someone that bikes or walks over driving, it is still frustrating how much we'd rather blame driving over anything else.
- therealdrag0 2y agoGot a source on paint?
- taeric 2y agoI just followed links in this article. https://tireindustryproject.org/faq/are-tires-the-main-source-of-ocean-microplastics/ https://tireindustryproject.org/faq/are-tires-the-main-sourc... is the link in the article, which relies on https://www.e-a.earth/plastic-paints-the-environment/ https://www.e-a.earth/plastic-paints-the-environment/. I confess confusion, here, as the article links in this as support of the tire claim. Which is in contradiction to what it says. Specifically, the article links it as support of a 28% claim, when the link is challenging that number.
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- boredatoms 2y agoCan they make tires without these problems?
- danparsonson 2y agoTyres trade material for grip, so, I think it's unlikely.
- tomrod 2y agoSure. They already do. We use them on bikes.
- uoaei 2y agoBikes have completely different needs and are very light compared to cars. It's apples to oranges.
- jcrben 2y agoProbably. Mentioned a couple manufacturers working on greener tires: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42273418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42273418
- uoaei 2y agoRelated: tire wear rate is proportional to (total weight / number of axles)^4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law This has serious implications for the future of automobile development in the age of heavy batteries.
- vel0city 2y agoThats stress on the road, as in things like the road surface, not tire wear. The physics about what's happening to the tire surface are pretty different from what's happening to the road.
- uoaei 2y agoAsphalt is a petroleum product, so it's not irrelevant. But even so you're missing some physics in your comment. Considering that friction is symmetric, road wear implies tire wear and vice versa, at roughly the same order of magnitude of severity, relative to respective hardnesses. Tires are generally softer than road surfaces, so they wear faster than roads.
- vel0city 2y ago> Asphalt is a petroleum product, Uhh, what? Not all roads are asphalt, tons aren't. But even then that's irrelevant. If I made the tire out of Vaseline would it have the same wear characteristics? After all it's also made of petroleum. Road wear isn't just about the friction. A lot of it is the stresses of the road surface being squished into the ground and deformed. If you've ever seen a boat planing over the water, the road surface kind of wants to make a similar pattern but due to rigidity it can't quite do that. So the internal stresses of the system of the road surface are pretty radically different than the layers of a tire being stretched and pressed into an air bubble.
- giantg2 2y agoIt's disappointing they don't list any sort of detailed solutions or future tech. All they do is promote taxation and mention that tire innovation can help.
- kordite 2y agoA friend and I were talking about the weight of EVs and we assumed my EV would be heavier than his car, a BMW 3. The BMW was heavier. Maybe the average EV is heaver than the average ICE, but if you compare what the EV has replaced for that owner, it might be that the EVs aren't noticeably heavier. I just checked the car I had before the Leaf - a Subaru Outback. It was also heavier. I don't think that taxing vehicles based on weight is the right option though. If the pollution is from tires, then tax tires. Do this based on the compounds present in that tire. If someone drives rashly, doing donuts all over the place, then they as a greater polluter will need to pay more. I don't really know anything about Formula 1, but get them to do the race on a single set of tires. Not for pollution, but for solutions that might make it into regular tires.
- darkwizard42 2y agoIt seems a number of factors contribute to this beyond weight: how you drive (braking and accelerating aggressively), what conditions you drive in, the state of your tires, etc. Weight seems to be one easy to understand and affecting factor. Why not start there?
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoBecause the thing you're worried about is microplastics, which are directly proportional to tire wear regardless of whether the wear is from heavier vehicles or more miles driven or idiots doing donuts, so if you just tax the externality directly you don't have to worry about which thing is causing it.
- akira2501 2y ago> before the Leaf - a Subaru Outback. It was also heavier. A bigger car with more cargo capacity was heavier? Is that a surprise? How _much_ heavier was the Outback? Only 100 lbs or so? That's the surprise.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoThe Outback is also bigger and has more cargo capacity than the BMW 3 but likewise only weighs 100 pounds more. The weight of electric cars is more proportional to their range than their size, and they also shed the ICE powertrain and exhaust/emissions systems, so the breakeven range where they weigh the same as an equivalent ICE car is a range of something like 200-300 miles. Which is why the BMW 3 and Tesla 3 have a similar weight. The difference is that as new battery chemistries improve energy density, the weight of the electric car can go down. Whereas ICE powertrains are extremely mature with not a lot of low-hanging fruit, so significant improvements in power to weight ratio are less likely to be forthcoming.
- Calamitous 2y agoWhatever became of the tweel?
- justinator 2y agoI try to tell people about this, but people are married to their cars and they're in denial that this is really a problem.
- chilldsgn 2y agoI literally cannot walk or ride a bike where I live. I will get robbed and/or killed and the weather doesn't play nice. Distances to places I need to go are also quite lengthy. Ordering stuff online doesn't solve the problem, they also drive vehicles with tires. It is out of necessity that people in my part of the world are reliant on vehicles, and I assume most other people in other countries are too. This is a very complex problem that is extremely difficult to solve and shouldn't just be dismissed as people just being married to their cars. However, I'd love to see a less polluting compound used for vehicle tires, which is also cost effective for the end user. In my country the railroad system is totally buggered due to crime and corruption, so there are trucks everywhere. Reducing reliance on semi trucks for freight could possibly reduce the pollution a bit. In my country at least...
- therealdrag0 2y agoFwiw ordering online is more efficient on average than driving yourself.
- darknavi 2y agoTrue, but in my experience being able to "Amazon" something to my house by 8AM tomorrow really lowers the bar for things I purchase, meaning I buy wayore than if I went to the store to get it, resulting in way more miles for my household.
- ricardobeat 2y agoA single 20km round trip can probably offset a hundred deliveries made by a van that is on a semi-fixed route.
- luxuryballs 2y agoWe just need to make the tires out of better stuff
- treme 2y agoOn previous thread of this topic, someone on hn claimed to have worked in tire industry and that some small additive that would cost few percent extra would largely address thos issue.
- NoPicklez 2y agoWhat would that additive do to prevent microplastics?
- SapporoChris 2y agoI found the following after a bit of searching. I'm sure there's more work being done. https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/news/2023/04/canadian-companies-innovating-to-tackle-microplastics-from-tire-wear-with-government-of-canada-support.html https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/news/202... Applied Quantum Materials Inc., in Edmonton, Alberta, is developing a specialized reinforcing additive for tires to minimize microplastic release over different road and temperature conditions. Nova Graphene Canada Inc., in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, is developing a graphene-enhanced rubber that could reduce tire-wear shedding and extend the life of tires. Stema Punch and Die Inc., in Cambridge, Ontario, is creating specialized compositions for tires to improve their wear and help stop the shed of microplastics.
- incanus77 2y agoI remember asking adults about this when I was probably seven years old. Once I learned that tires wore down, eventually smooth, it made sense to me that the material had to go somewhere. No one really had much of a good answer as to where it all went.
- tim333 2y agoI think the bulk is dust on the road that gets washed off by rain and down the gutter. But some goes in the air.
- andrewstuart 2y agoSome places in India require by law that plastic waste goes into roads. Think how much plastic that will release.
- switch007 2y agoQuick, let's make something more expensive! Everything is killing people and everything needs taxing more, naturally. It's OK because I myself can afford it and we can just tell poor people to use the public transport that doesn't exist. The public transport that does exist is also expensive and/or unreliable because ideology in government is that cars are better. But that's also ok, I think, anyway doesn't affect me --- Sarcasm aside people really need to stop this reflexive "scientists say X is bad" -> more taxes and higher prices reaction.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoI guess we can ignore all these problems and keep making the environment worse, as an alternative strategy. I don't have any kids, but I hope yours are going to be ok.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pvaldes 2y ago> If the pollution is from tires, then tax tires. Tax tires, move worn tires to a recycling plant, bill a recycling tax when the owner buys a new tire... ... and then set fire to the tires, keep the money for recycling safe in your pocket, and then keep lying about how good is that we "recycle" things. "In Spain, a recycling plant burns every four days, a figure that has increased since 2018. In 2023, the record was broken with 109 recycling plants that were [deliberately] set on fire" [1] "In 2019, a tire recycling plant in Seseña burned for days. This fire produced pollution greater than that generated by the city of Madrid for a whole year" [1] Or grind it and put the stuff in each children park, as currently. ------------------- [1] (In Spanish) https://www.cuatro.com/noticias/sociedad/20240130/alerta-aumento-incendios-plantas-reciclaje-delito-medioambiental_18_011567437.html https://www.cuatro.com/noticias/sociedad/20240130/alerta-aum...
- naming_the_user 2y agoCool, let’s make tyres that degrade when in small chunks with high surface area. It’ll cost a bit more to replace them every few years (since they’ll also degrade a bit more whilst on the car) but will be a far better solution than the kneejerk “lol ban all the cars” stuff.
- znpy 2y agoThis looks like a good time to remind that forcing people back in the office means forcing a ton of people to use cars, most likely with a single passenger (the driver) through long commute. They'll emit a bunch of CO2 and pollution in the environment and they'll shed a ton of micro-plastics in the environment through car tires. And don't even bother commenting about electric cars or whatever: electric cars are a minority of the vehicles in circulations, there are a ton of SUVs and the majority of people live far from their workplace and will have to use cars anyway. People living in cities at walking distance from their workplace or served by functioning/efficient/effective public transport are a small lucky minority. We should really push for public transport (ON RAILS!) and for more work-from-home arrangements.
- crvst 2y agoRubber is not a plastic
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoMost tires are not made from natural rubber, but from synthetics.
- crvst 2y agoYet, it is still not literally a plastic by definition. I feel the term “plastic” is already demonized enough, and now it often serves as a generic umbrella term for alarmist purposes.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoHow are you defining plastic that synthetic tires don't fit the definition?
- crvst 2y agoPlastics are rigid, while rubber (elastomers) is elastic. You might say this is nitpicking, but not everything that's potentially harmful in its dispersed form is plastic. Asbestos, coal dust, and sand dust are not plastics. For me, it's like calling any shiny metal 'silver' or calling any clear stone a 'diamond' - they may look similar, but they're completely different materials.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoAh. Got it. You're talking about rigid plastics. Not all plastics are rigid. Polyester and nylon are frequently spun into thin fibers so they are flexible for clothing, and plastic bags are a thing. Plastic lids are frequently flexible so you can actually put them in the container. Rigid plastics are not the only kind that exist.
- RecycledEle 2y agoIt's not exactly the point of this story, but I found a way to reduce the number of waste tires I generate. Tires with 6/32" to 8/32" of tread are a scam. They get flats, and wear down to the legal minimum (in Texas) of 3/32" very quickly. I buy tires with 19/32" of tread. No nail has yet managed to go through 19/32" of tread (or that much air gap) plus through the equivalent of a 10-ply design to puncture my tire, at least not until I wear them down to 6/33". If we wanted puncture-proof, run-flat, handle-like-touring-tires, last-forever tites, we could have them. They are out there.
- randmeerkat 2y agoThere’s so much waste with every household owning a car. A lot of this could be avoided with affordable mass transit options like high speed trains and subways instead.
- throaway2501 2y ago[flagged]