[veemjeem]

I've read that the majority of microplastics come from tire wear (national geographic quoted 28% of the total), and because there's no good alternative to wheel tires, it's unlikely we'll see a decrease of pollution here. So even if we found an alternative to bottles, plastic bags, clothing, etc, it still won't make a dent in pollution unless we convince the world to use a form of public transit that doesn't make use of plastic tires.

We could reduce human consumption of the particles if we only consumed lab-grown meat & hydroponically grown vegetables where the water is ultra-filtered before use.

[digging]

> because there's no good alternative to wheel tires, it's unlikely we'll see a decrease of pollution here

Well, we could stop pretending that God gave cars dominion over the earth and build livable cities.

[broguinn]

I also learned in a Not Just Bikes video that the US tire lobby prevents regulation on quieter car tires. I bet there are ways to make tires that shed fewer microplastics - it's just that we don't do it.

[proto_lambda]

> there's no good alternative to wheel tires

Steel wheels on steel tracks work pretty well, actually. Admittedly brake dust is still a problem for classic locomotive-pulled trains.

[merlinran]

28% is not majority. Plus the hard part shouldn't prevent us from doing the easy part with much higher ROI.

[veemjeem]

I did some more research, and it looks like tires are the 2nd largest part of the pie in terms of single origin. The largest is textiles which are 35%.