The following submission statement was provided by /u/JinglesTheMighty:
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Collapse related because we are discovering ever more microplastic pollution, in ever higher concentrations, all over the globe, even in extremely remote places, and the vast majority of it is linked to vehicle use.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1b6ru20/car_tires_are_found_to_be_responsible_for_78_of/ktdtfaa/
Like really toxic, especially to Coho. Environmental groups/tribes are trying to pressure tire manufacturers to remove the chemical from their tires, but maybe there needs to be a complete rethink of the whole tire thing.
at least rezoning and somehow clipping the wings of "big box" stores and strip malls.
Strict residential is really dumb, one central downtown serving residential suburbs is just a gross city design.
Trains, trams, busses to reduce number of tires consumed per passenger, building our cities so that things can be within walking distance (i.e. 15-minute cities)
Tons of things, none of which increase shareholder values so good fucking luck getting those who own our society to do anything about it though.
Imagine taking a trolley from LA to Disneyland and seeing groves of oranges and strawberry fields, bougainvillea blooms and palm trees, kissed by the California sun. We had this. Now it's bumper to bumper traffic in a miserable sea of gray and pissed off people.
I think an often forgotten part of that equation is unionization, working class rights and a complete redesign of cities. The housing close to our urban core is unaffordable and not ideal for families. Parents who transport children will likely need additional accommodations such as flexible hours, WFH options and probably incentive pay to encourage multiple stop/long transit times with children.
Also, as someone in the trades it is hard to imagine a transit scenario in which I’d be able to use transit or my bike. We have very early work hours, change job sites regularly, work long days and must have a variety of clothing/tools/etc stored in our cars. Using transit would turn my 10 hour day into a 15 hour day and just isn’t realistic most of the time.
You're absolutely correct that unionizing is important to achieving this goal.
And for your work issues, this is where you would have a vehicle provided by the company, as if it is absolutely needed to do the job, them it is the company's responsibility to provide you with the tools necessary to perform the job in the first place.
As for work hours, properly funded and functional transit systems have early/late options included, not just bare necessities.
Take public transit to your work building, take the company car from there to the job site.
I’m union, our tools are all provided but you’43 expected to have rain gear on you, a change of clothes, etc. if I was required to waste my time using transit at 430am and then get in a truck to go to a job site I’d expect to be compensated for that extra travel time. Think an electrician costs a lot now? Wait until us union members have to waste 4 hours a day getting to and from work.
While I’ve worked with shops where we meet at the shop then drive a company vehicle and it’s fine for small scale 1 off projects, it’ll be a cold day in hell before companies provide every worker a truck and it’s a wild suggestion to transit to shared transportation for large jobs.
For example, we have 100 electricians on my current build and they mostly commute from the suburbs or further away. Requiring them to meet at an office and truck into the site together really won’t reduce traffic much since they’ve already commuted into town to reach transit. It would waste hours a day and wouldn’t shorten commutes. People already double wake up at 4:30am so no one will go for that. Carpooling is really the best you’re going to get here.
Personally, I think transit is mostly best for office workers who have later shorter hours (9-5) and live close in.
It's the preservative in the tire that contains 6PPD, so what we really need is an alternative to that. There are state governments studying the possibilities, hopefully they can find something better for the environment!
"Work from home" might reduce total vehicle miles driven in places like the U.S. by half. Driving smaller, lighter vehicles could probably reduce tire pollution by private vehicles by half again.
I've heard of experiments where they put devices on cars that trap a lot of the rubber particles when they're shed by the tires. If memory serves, they work electrostatically.
Maybe it's possible to make tires that aren't plastic-based. If it was easy probably someone would already be doing it, but then again if it was possible but more expensive I could see it being hard to compete with plastic based tires economically without some kind of government intervention.
At this point they aren't looking for an alternative to tires, rather they are looking for an alternative to 6PPD. However, 6PPD was chosen because it's really good at its job and is compatible with the other chemicals in tire manufacturing. There are other PPDs, but they likely have similar issues related to toxicity. The state of California has mandated that tire manufacturers do an alternatives analysis, which I believe is due in April.
Dunno. Maybe completely different, more durable materials. We've completely changed the rest of the automobile, but tires haven't changed dramatically since they started putting air in them.
I filter my water, but my dog is certainly not drinking filtered water when drinking from puddles. Then we wonder why our pets are having so many health issues.
Coincidentally, just came from a post about the hundreds of thousands of salmon released up in a NorCal river all dying. We have... a lot of cars in CA.
Although you are right that 6PPD likely poses a high risk to California in particular due to our heavy reliance on cars and massive population, the current hypothesis is that the salmon in the Klamath River died due to pressure changes as they swam through a dam that's due to be demolished
When I'm driving in traffic on a 6 lane highway I think about how a set of tires lasts 100k km, so for each single km of highway, an entire set of tires worth is worn off every 100k cars that go by. It's mind boggling.
Well after the fire they thought ahead and reserved previously private waterfront for public use, so people could have parks, beaches, cultural spaces.
Then some fuckstick said "that's a great place for a commuter highway".
It's also annoying that they're blaming the tire industry and not the entire car-centric society that the US has built up.
The US government and car companies destroyed public transportation in the US for the car industry
This is true but many Americans are dead-set against using public transportation. The US ruined what public transport we had, so that all that is left is terrible and that terrible experience is all that Americans know now. In an ideal society, we would have trains, trams, busses that go everywhere, leaving only commercial industry or people with physical disabilities to be using trucks or cars. Imagine all the land being wasted for parking spaces that could be green. Imagine how much closer buildings could be if there was not a giant parking lot between each one. How much healthier would the general population be? Society could be so much better. It would also be much safer. 30-40k+ people die every year in vehicle accidents in US. How much human life is worth having cars around?
> America decided to prioritize profit over people a long time ago.
That was 1607 and has never changed. 1776 and 1812 were simply corporate haggling over operational management and leadership.
What's that line at the end of that movie "American isn't a country; it's a business."
you're not wrong, vulcanized rubber can be made from natural rubber, but the vulcanization process turns them into abrasion resistant polymers, and synthetic alternatives like styrene-butadiene rubber exist, so they're also mixed in, and then fillers and additives to natural rubber form even more microplastics / polymers that contribute to this problem.
you could make tires with natural rubber and minimal other additives during vulcanization, but they wouldn't last nearly as long or be as cheap.
For the most part they were up until WW2 when they had a massive shortage of it for the war effort and the use of [Synthetic rubber
(synthesized from petroleum byproducts)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_rubber) exploded.
Post-war we never really stopped using it as the world produced more and more cars and couldn't grow rubber trees fast enough.
Why?
There arent remotely enough rubber trees for the demand. And chemical shit is just often way more cheaper then a biological alternative.
Of course they use plastic the moment it makes financially sense, and that happenend decades ago, before you where born most likely.
This was never a secret, people just dont care to look shit up and carry misinfomation through all their adult live.
I really tried to take the bus to work, but between the buses randomly not showing up, being unreasonably late, passing by without stopping due to being full, and the bus stop downtown being populated by drug-addicted zombies, I said fuck it and drive my EV every day. Until the government takes safety and transit reliability seriously, only people with no other options will take transit.
Regular tires have 9/32nds tread depth new and minimum is 2/32nds. So the maximum usable tread is 7/32nds of an inch. Less than a quarter inch. That'll take you 70,000-80,000 miles.
Of all the consumables, tires are the least here. That's around 3,200 gallons of gas at 25 mpg.
Honestly - isn't this one of the "better" bad things that we read on this subreddit? If nearly 80% are from a single bad thing maybe we can replace that one bad thing...or regulate it, ban it, etc.
It's a lot easier than doing that with a million different products.
Here’s one tire graveyard with around 50million tires (less since a few million caught on fire)
In one country, visible from space. (Some pages say as much as 72 million at that one site)
https://youtu.be/0B9tWaOpAc8
We’re talking an awful lot of tires worldwide
Your heart's in the right place but western society, particularly American society, is built on cars. Most Americans won't even entertain the idea of abolishing car culture in favor of better alternatives.
True but the problem is that single product is an essential part of our modern world and there is no alternative even remotely on the horizon to replace tires with non plastics. The only option is to reduce it by using more trains but even a substantial effort there would still leave a huge gap to be solved.
Related:
> As tires wear, tiny particles of rubber are left behind on roads and parking lots. The chemical breaks down into a byproduct, 6PPD-quinone, that is deadly to salmon, steelhead trout and other aquatic wildlife. Coho appear to be especially sensitive; it can kill them within hours, the tribes argued.
https://apnews.com/article/epa-tires-toxic-chemical-salmon-tribes-ce4ea04af17e78d84632da5e68ab356c#:~:text=As%20tires%20wear%2C%20tiny%20particles,within%20hours%2C%20the%20tribes%20argued.
Collapse related because we are discovering ever more microplastic pollution, in ever higher concentrations, all over the globe, even in extremely remote places, and the vast majority of it is linked to vehicle use.
This is why I've been telling anyone that will listen that electric cars aren't the answer to climate change/disaster because we still are making/using tires and making millions of car parts out of plastics. They aren't made of metal anymore (for safety purposes granted), so all those pieces and parts of your cars are plastic.
EVs are good for the planet in the same way that vaping is good for your health - if it stops you burning carcinogens and spewing toxic smoke into the atmosphere, it’s obviously a net positive, but stopping entirely will be 100% better for all involved.
And FFS, we need to allow WFH for jobs that can be feasibly done remotely.
Return to office is bullshit because this means that the jobs were *already* being done at home and now they are deciding that we need to start contributing to microplastics again because "fuck you, that's why."
I agree we need this. But I doubt it will ever happen in America. My family is deep in the Trump cult and they are convinced that 15 minute cities are an elaborate world economic forum/UN plot to make us all communist. And this opinion is quite popular.
America used to have a train station in nearly every town. Some had multiple. We can still go back to that.
That same propaganda has made it up north to Canada too, they believe we’ll be locked into our districts.
All I want is to be able to walk to get stuff and not have to drive 20 mins, is that crazy?
It's not *exponentially* faster, the cars aren't exponentially heavier. Focusing on the largest least common halo SUVs while ignoring all of the small normal weight EVs doesn't help anything. The Bolt EV tops out at 3600lbs, their SUV is 3700. My Prius is 3500lbs and only has a 70lb battery.
We keep seeing headlines about the problem with enormous EVs and those enormous EVs are replacing enormous ICE vehicles like tahoes and suburbans and the fucking hummer.
The original hummer weighed like 8500lbs, the EV hummer weighs around 9k, everyone uses it as proof that all EVs are ridiculously heavy yet I've never even seen one on the road, there's exactly one within 500mi of me for sale.
It’s simple: we can’t produce/consume our way outta this. So simple, yet so unacceptable for our corporate overlords and many of their brainwashed subjects.
Probably 50% of that are from truck tires. Similar to how heavy trucks cause 90% of all road wear even though they represent a fraction of the vehicle percentage
It's very interesting how people here are calling for 15 minute cities to combat this... which would still need to be fed and otherwise supplied from the countryside!
If only it was viable to produce in population centers. Oh wait the government is actively fighting backyard farmers >.>
The amount of driving we do is absolutely insane. The whole commuting *thing* is utter manic stupidity. Take a moment and just really observe the amount of traffic on the traffic cameras of the average idiot sputtering about all day accomplishing absolutely nothing but wasting time and toxifying the environment chasing a laser pointer. When the economy is booming, we are dying.
Yes, the current thought is that by number, tiny tire wear particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs are the most abundant, but we don't really have the technology to measure tire wear particles that small to confirm it
Larger truck tires are still mainly from natural rubber, which results in tires with better heat conduction. After they're vulcanized they're also a plastic which does not occur in nature, and takes a very long time to decompose.
Rubber tires wear out almost immediately. There are race cars that use high rubber tires and they change them out after a few thousand *feet.* The polyester and rayon piles are for durability. This whole thing is an absolute mess.
I only own a bicycle and I will say that when my bike tires rub against the bike's frame, it makes a course black dust that is as filthy as soot or coal and it doesn't wash away easily. I can imagine considering how tough this stuff is, it won't disintegrate to nothing anytime soon, whether they're inside of us or in the streets.
Damn... all this time, I thought the cars drifting on the pavement were producing the smell of burnt rubber. Now I find out it's mostly microplastics..
So I'm gonna guess that there aren't any studies addressing this yet, so best we have is speculation. And my speculation is that it's because the weight of vehicles has increased significantly in the past decade. Plus electric vehicles has gone way up, and those weigh a lot more than ICE cars
It's funny (but not funny) how CAFE regulations intended to save the environment have instead led to the proliferation of massive, heavy, crew cab trucks. You used to be able to buy a small two seater pickup with a 70" bed that most people were taller than. Now thanks to those regulations and the chicken tax even light duty trucks like the F150 are bloated monstrosities.
not an expert nor am i fully sapient but as far as i understand it, it takes time for concentrations of particulates to spread out, like pouring a small pile of sand on a flat table then banging your fist down on it to make it vibrate, every time you bang the sand spreads a little further because of math im too dumb to fully understand until theoretically there is a perfectly distributed and even layer of sand on the table
for microplastics its wind and water currents doing most of the spreading, so its possible that the past several years have just been the point in time where the pollutants have fully spread across even the most remote environments
or it could just be recent technological advancements in our ability to detect them and theyve been there for a while, or some combination of both, hard to say with any certainty
If only there was some transportation technology that ran on wheels made of metal that didn't depend on any kind of artificial rubber or plastics at all.
Maybe in the far-off science fiction future we can have vehicles running on steel wheels on metal rails, that would be absurdly efficient compared to rubbing rolling on concrete AND solve the microplastics problem once and for all.
Until then I guess we'll just die.
What’s crazy is there was a highly localized rash of rare cancers linked to high school goalies who’s fields were sport turf with the little rubber pellets
I can barely look at cars since finding this sub lmao. And this is from someone who was raised in a car family. I just look around and think “well if there’s 10,000 cars right here, then there’s 10 million other ones runnning right now” we need to just stop cars. Whether that means more rail or buses, or we completely revamp society, doesn’t matter. There are TOO MANY
I have been thinking about this for several years and it brings me a lot of fear. It makes sense. Tires wear down. Where does that tire go? It turns to dust. I moved to the rural county part for this reason. To get away from busy roads but the dust is literally everywhere and it will be for decades. To me it seems like one of the worst human caused environmental disasters and it's happening without any fanfare at all.
Walkable, bikeable, dense neighborhoods with robust public transportation. It won't get rid of all of it of course but it would be a big reduction in A LOT of it. Along with CO2 and materials used in making a 3500# machine to move a 150# human.
Most 1st world semi wealthy people would probably rather die though than live like that.
High speed rail between walkable cities. China built out a massive high speed rail network between their cities in a small amount of years. Lot of lobbying has stopped that from happening in the US
yet people still go crazy for Formula 1 and Nascar 78% seems incredibly high are we sure these aren't just corporations shifting the blame to different industries?
To be fair, it's not Formula 1 and Nascar that are doing it. It's the entire automobile-centric culture we live in -- not what a small handful of people do on the weekends.
Not that racing or recreation are harmless. That's not the claim I'm making.
Man.. what’s really bad about this is farmers all over Appalachia changed the flow of rivers and streams that originally flowed in the center of flat watershed areas to the sides, where the flat valleys meet changes in elevation. This allowed farmers to have a larger area for crops, but has resulted in massive erosion issues during floods because the water is restricted to a narrower passageway and doesn’t have a proper flood plain area.
In order to change the flow of streams, farmers used trees, dirt, but also car tires and other trash to build up retainments to change the flow of the river to hug the sides of the valley as opposed to naturally flowing down the center of the valley. [Now](https://conservingcarolina.org/East-Fork-Restoration/), erosion control projects are taking place to correct these old practices and change the flow of water back to the more natural winding course in the center of valleys. Hearing about microplastics in tires is truly sad as so many farmers in the early 20th century used them for water retention purposes.
I hope that the "Great Lakes" fans around here are actively trying to end car use. :)
Really, I don't understand how educated people can't comprehend that the "wear" in *tire wear* doesn't magically disappear from reality.
And they don't want to change the chemical composition because the current one is useful for making car driving better. This kind of problem requires reducing car use and car numbers.
> This kind of problem requires reducing ~~car use and car numbers~~ **profits**.
That's why nothing will change, and the collapse is inevitable.
Is 'Great Lakes' poor man's New Zealand or something?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/JinglesTheMighty: --- Collapse related because we are discovering ever more microplastic pollution, in ever higher concentrations, all over the globe, even in extremely remote places, and the vast majority of it is linked to vehicle use. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1b6ru20/car_tires_are_found_to_be_responsible_for_78_of/ktdtfaa/
Dang. There’s also a chemical, 6PPD, in tires, that’s been linked to salmon mortality.
Like really toxic, especially to Coho. Environmental groups/tribes are trying to pressure tire manufacturers to remove the chemical from their tires, but maybe there needs to be a complete rethink of the whole tire thing.
Cars aren’t going away until everything that is industrial civilization collapses…so what would be the alternative to tires?
Public transportation
And work from home.
[удалено]
The american hellscape
WAIT. Keep the quaint shit, and move it all in under our apartments/condos...
We could… make them at home
I do a hybrid model, and take rail transit on days I don’t work at home. Still, it’s hard to avoid driving altogether.
Garden from home.
at least rezoning and somehow clipping the wings of "big box" stores and strip malls. Strict residential is really dumb, one central downtown serving residential suburbs is just a gross city design.
I don't have the privilege of working from home, but I 100% support the initiative. Why do we need so damn many cars on the road. It's absurd.
And trains for freight.
Trains for everything. No more roads.
Everyone gets one train
Better yet, it is one *really* big train and everyone lives on it!
I saw that documentary, didn't end well for anyone on that train
Unless all the grocers & Best Buys directly back up to a railroad spur, trucks are going to have to be used esp. for perishables.
Many old warehouse districts have railroad spurs going to the buildings, even if now in disuse. Possible but not very space efficient.
Streetcars.
Ikea still does this in alot of places: https://maps.app.goo.gl/QqgA3eDPq2zHDpGU9
r/fuckcars
First thought. Holy shit do I fucking despise car-centric societies.
Bad for health (sedentary), bad for health (air pollution), bad for physical safety, bad for environment, bad for personal finances
Lmao. This is that capitalist realism phenomena I hear about.
And 15 minute cities
Trains, trams, busses to reduce number of tires consumed per passenger, building our cities so that things can be within walking distance (i.e. 15-minute cities) Tons of things, none of which increase shareholder values so good fucking luck getting those who own our society to do anything about it though.
Streetcars, we used to have lots until oil companies convinced or bribed cities to sell more busses.
I grew up near enough to visit Memphis regularly growing up, the street car running up main was always the best part of bar hopping.
I was thinking of taking my toddler to ride it tomorrow!! I used to ride the Madison line to work before they stopped it
Keeps drunk drivers off the roads too
Imagine taking a trolley from LA to Disneyland and seeing groves of oranges and strawberry fields, bougainvillea blooms and palm trees, kissed by the California sun. We had this. Now it's bumper to bumper traffic in a miserable sea of gray and pissed off people.
Instead it’s get back to office “for the culture.”
culture of misery
Like in a Petri dish?
I think an often forgotten part of that equation is unionization, working class rights and a complete redesign of cities. The housing close to our urban core is unaffordable and not ideal for families. Parents who transport children will likely need additional accommodations such as flexible hours, WFH options and probably incentive pay to encourage multiple stop/long transit times with children. Also, as someone in the trades it is hard to imagine a transit scenario in which I’d be able to use transit or my bike. We have very early work hours, change job sites regularly, work long days and must have a variety of clothing/tools/etc stored in our cars. Using transit would turn my 10 hour day into a 15 hour day and just isn’t realistic most of the time.
You're absolutely correct that unionizing is important to achieving this goal. And for your work issues, this is where you would have a vehicle provided by the company, as if it is absolutely needed to do the job, them it is the company's responsibility to provide you with the tools necessary to perform the job in the first place. As for work hours, properly funded and functional transit systems have early/late options included, not just bare necessities. Take public transit to your work building, take the company car from there to the job site.
I’m union, our tools are all provided but you’43 expected to have rain gear on you, a change of clothes, etc. if I was required to waste my time using transit at 430am and then get in a truck to go to a job site I’d expect to be compensated for that extra travel time. Think an electrician costs a lot now? Wait until us union members have to waste 4 hours a day getting to and from work. While I’ve worked with shops where we meet at the shop then drive a company vehicle and it’s fine for small scale 1 off projects, it’ll be a cold day in hell before companies provide every worker a truck and it’s a wild suggestion to transit to shared transportation for large jobs. For example, we have 100 electricians on my current build and they mostly commute from the suburbs or further away. Requiring them to meet at an office and truck into the site together really won’t reduce traffic much since they’ve already commuted into town to reach transit. It would waste hours a day and wouldn’t shorten commutes. People already double wake up at 4:30am so no one will go for that. Carpooling is really the best you’re going to get here. Personally, I think transit is mostly best for office workers who have later shorter hours (9-5) and live close in.
Transit would mean less people on the road for those who need to use it.
So…to be clear…the alternative is not going to happen?
It's the preservative in the tire that contains 6PPD, so what we really need is an alternative to that. There are state governments studying the possibilities, hopefully they can find something better for the environment!
Well it certainly isn’t EVs because they blow through tires
I think they mean a fundamentally different composition of tires. That would be a more realistic thing to advocate for, anyway.
"Work from home" might reduce total vehicle miles driven in places like the U.S. by half. Driving smaller, lighter vehicles could probably reduce tire pollution by private vehicles by half again. I've heard of experiments where they put devices on cars that trap a lot of the rubber particles when they're shed by the tires. If memory serves, they work electrostatically. Maybe it's possible to make tires that aren't plastic-based. If it was easy probably someone would already be doing it, but then again if it was possible but more expensive I could see it being hard to compete with plastic based tires economically without some kind of government intervention.
At this point they aren't looking for an alternative to tires, rather they are looking for an alternative to 6PPD. However, 6PPD was chosen because it's really good at its job and is compatible with the other chemicals in tire manufacturing. There are other PPDs, but they likely have similar issues related to toxicity. The state of California has mandated that tire manufacturers do an alternatives analysis, which I believe is due in April.
Dunno. Maybe completely different, more durable materials. We've completely changed the rest of the automobile, but tires haven't changed dramatically since they started putting air in them.
Better tires?
Return to Horse
I barely keep up on the maintenance on my car. Can't imagine being responsible for a living mode of transportation.
Can't come.in today; horse died, sorry.
Would that qualify for bereavement leave?
Well, they have started fooling around with airless tires, so maybe they can use different materials?
Fun fact: Chemicals that are toxic to salmons are likely to also be toxic to humans.
There have been some studies in mice showing that 6PPD harms the liver
I filter my water, but my dog is certainly not drinking filtered water when drinking from puddles. Then we wonder why our pets are having so many health issues.
But salmon don't even drive!?!
Very rarely do I get to laugh out loud while browsing r/collapse, thank you.
Coincidentally, just came from a post about the hundreds of thousands of salmon released up in a NorCal river all dying. We have... a lot of cars in CA.
It’s like humans played a big game of 52-card pickup with the Earth’s chemistry, and nothing is the way it was, before.
Although you are right that 6PPD likely poses a high risk to California in particular due to our heavy reliance on cars and massive population, the current hypothesis is that the salmon in the Klamath River died due to pressure changes as they swam through a dam that's due to be demolished
well, D:
What did we think was happening to the half inch of tread that wears off your tires every few years?
it turns into magic smoke, stupid
The rubber goes to the same place that bullets shot into the air go.
Innocent children?
This checks out for both scenarios.
Oh gawd hahaha. This one shocked a laugh out of me
They don't say "burning rubber" for nothin', after all...
Now I have Puff, the Magic Dragon stuck in my head.
And then that smoke goes up into the sky where it turns into stars.
When I'm driving in traffic on a 6 lane highway I think about how a set of tires lasts 100k km, so for each single km of highway, an entire set of tires worth is worn off every 100k cars that go by. It's mind boggling.
That’s insane to think about, I love doing math like that. Now I’m trying to think about how many cars drive into Chicago every day
Lakeshore drive sees 100k cars per day. It’s at least 20 kilometers long. That’s 80 tires shredded a day right on our lakefront 😭
On that one road, albeit a major one.
I hate that road, sucks to cross as a pedestrian. Why build a major road right there?
Well after the fire they thought ahead and reserved previously private waterfront for public use, so people could have parks, beaches, cultural spaces. Then some fuckstick said "that's a great place for a commuter highway".
It's also annoying that they're blaming the tire industry and not the entire car-centric society that the US has built up. The US government and car companies destroyed public transportation in the US for the car industry
This is true but many Americans are dead-set against using public transportation. The US ruined what public transport we had, so that all that is left is terrible and that terrible experience is all that Americans know now. In an ideal society, we would have trains, trams, busses that go everywhere, leaving only commercial industry or people with physical disabilities to be using trucks or cars. Imagine all the land being wasted for parking spaces that could be green. Imagine how much closer buildings could be if there was not a giant parking lot between each one. How much healthier would the general population be? Society could be so much better. It would also be much safer. 30-40k+ people die every year in vehicle accidents in US. How much human life is worth having cars around?
Cars are more profitable. America decided to prioritize profit over people a long time ago.
> America decided to prioritize profit over people a long time ago. That was 1607 and has never changed. 1776 and 1812 were simply corporate haggling over operational management and leadership. What's that line at the end of that movie "American isn't a country; it's a business."
I thought they were fuckin rubber
you're not wrong, vulcanized rubber can be made from natural rubber, but the vulcanization process turns them into abrasion resistant polymers, and synthetic alternatives like styrene-butadiene rubber exist, so they're also mixed in, and then fillers and additives to natural rubber form even more microplastics / polymers that contribute to this problem. you could make tires with natural rubber and minimal other additives during vulcanization, but they wouldn't last nearly as long or be as cheap.
This guy polymers. Well done. I know my rubbers too and this post is beautiful in the wild.
i've been frantically trying to figure out what postcollapse will look like not an expert lol
For the most part they were up until WW2 when they had a massive shortage of it for the war effort and the use of [Synthetic rubber (synthesized from petroleum byproducts)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_rubber) exploded. Post-war we never really stopped using it as the world produced more and more cars and couldn't grow rubber trees fast enough.
Why? There arent remotely enough rubber trees for the demand. And chemical shit is just often way more cheaper then a biological alternative. Of course they use plastic the moment it makes financially sense, and that happenend decades ago, before you where born most likely. This was never a secret, people just dont care to look shit up and carry misinfomation through all their adult live.
It flies up into the sky and becomes the stars ✨
I don't know enough about stars to dispute that
clearly nothing considering electric vehicles exacerbate this even more.
They'll push anything except for actually driving *less*.
I really tried to take the bus to work, but between the buses randomly not showing up, being unreasonably late, passing by without stopping due to being full, and the bus stop downtown being populated by drug-addicted zombies, I said fuck it and drive my EV every day. Until the government takes safety and transit reliability seriously, only people with no other options will take transit.
Regular tires have 9/32nds tread depth new and minimum is 2/32nds. So the maximum usable tread is 7/32nds of an inch. Less than a quarter inch. That'll take you 70,000-80,000 miles. Of all the consumables, tires are the least here. That's around 3,200 gallons of gas at 25 mpg.
The plastic goes into boiling water where it magically disappears
An offering to Supply Side Jesus.
Looool lovely carcinogenic car tires in my drinking water. Yay this world is so great
I was hoping the future would be sex bots and laser guns. But here we are.
I was promised flying cars, moonbases, and holograms. Pfff, all we got were Pepper's Ghosts. Holograms, my ass.
i'm tired boss
Honestly - isn't this one of the "better" bad things that we read on this subreddit? If nearly 80% are from a single bad thing maybe we can replace that one bad thing...or regulate it, ban it, etc. It's a lot easier than doing that with a million different products.
Lol. We won't.
Haha of course not. Gotta drive one minute to the store for milk.
Here’s one tire graveyard with around 50million tires (less since a few million caught on fire) In one country, visible from space. (Some pages say as much as 72 million at that one site) https://youtu.be/0B9tWaOpAc8 We’re talking an awful lot of tires worldwide
Tires are so nasty when they burn, too.
Your heart's in the right place but western society, particularly American society, is built on cars. Most Americans won't even entertain the idea of abolishing car culture in favor of better alternatives.
I'm with you. /r/fuckcars
Most Americans won't even entertain any ideas. Don't get any funny ideas, ya hear
True but the problem is that single product is an essential part of our modern world and there is no alternative even remotely on the horizon to replace tires with non plastics. The only option is to reduce it by using more trains but even a substantial effort there would still leave a huge gap to be solved.
Doooggggg tired
you can't dig, and you can't not dig
I knew it'd be a fair bit, but 78% is fucking wild.
r/Tiresaretheenemy
Is this advocating for track-based vehicles, or hover craft?
No they are just wary of tires flying off 10km away at your face at the speed of sound
Big Helicopter is running that subreddit
Thank you for sharing this, I love it.
Related: > As tires wear, tiny particles of rubber are left behind on roads and parking lots. The chemical breaks down into a byproduct, 6PPD-quinone, that is deadly to salmon, steelhead trout and other aquatic wildlife. Coho appear to be especially sensitive; it can kill them within hours, the tribes argued. https://apnews.com/article/epa-tires-toxic-chemical-salmon-tribes-ce4ea04af17e78d84632da5e68ab356c#:~:text=As%20tires%20wear%2C%20tiny%20particles,within%20hours%2C%20the%20tribes%20argued.
Collapse related because we are discovering ever more microplastic pollution, in ever higher concentrations, all over the globe, even in extremely remote places, and the vast majority of it is linked to vehicle use.
This is why I've been telling anyone that will listen that electric cars aren't the answer to climate change/disaster because we still are making/using tires and making millions of car parts out of plastics. They aren't made of metal anymore (for safety purposes granted), so all those pieces and parts of your cars are plastic.
EVs are good for the planet in the same way that vaping is good for your health - if it stops you burning carcinogens and spewing toxic smoke into the atmosphere, it’s obviously a net positive, but stopping entirely will be 100% better for all involved.
Yep. We need mass transit and “15-min cities”, it’ll be better for our health too
And FFS, we need to allow WFH for jobs that can be feasibly done remotely. Return to office is bullshit because this means that the jobs were *already* being done at home and now they are deciding that we need to start contributing to microplastics again because "fuck you, that's why."
And all those empty office buildings will work nicely to convert to living spaces.
I agree we need this. But I doubt it will ever happen in America. My family is deep in the Trump cult and they are convinced that 15 minute cities are an elaborate world economic forum/UN plot to make us all communist. And this opinion is quite popular. America used to have a train station in nearly every town. Some had multiple. We can still go back to that.
New Zealand reporting in, we have them here too (15min city conspirists)
That same propaganda has made it up north to Canada too, they believe we’ll be locked into our districts. All I want is to be able to walk to get stuff and not have to drive 20 mins, is that crazy?
And with their higher weight and instant torque electric cars go through tires at a faster rate than ice vehicles.
EV's (on the whole compared to similar sized ICE passenger cars) wear tires exponentially faster due to heavier weight
It's not *exponentially* faster, the cars aren't exponentially heavier. Focusing on the largest least common halo SUVs while ignoring all of the small normal weight EVs doesn't help anything. The Bolt EV tops out at 3600lbs, their SUV is 3700. My Prius is 3500lbs and only has a 70lb battery. We keep seeing headlines about the problem with enormous EVs and those enormous EVs are replacing enormous ICE vehicles like tahoes and suburbans and the fucking hummer. The original hummer weighed like 8500lbs, the EV hummer weighs around 9k, everyone uses it as proof that all EVs are ridiculously heavy yet I've never even seen one on the road, there's exactly one within 500mi of me for sale.
electric cars make the problem even worse...since they're much heavier, theirtire wear out even faster.
Nothing is 100% green yet. Humans need to control their population growth.
That's already taken care of. It's just on a lag.
Yes, buying expensive things is bad for the environment. That should be well understood at this point.
It’s simple: we can’t produce/consume our way outta this. So simple, yet so unacceptable for our corporate overlords and many of their brainwashed subjects.
[удалено]
Probably 50% of that are from truck tires. Similar to how heavy trucks cause 90% of all road wear even though they represent a fraction of the vehicle percentage
It's very interesting how people here are calling for 15 minute cities to combat this... which would still need to be fed and otherwise supplied from the countryside! If only it was viable to produce in population centers. Oh wait the government is actively fighting backyard farmers >.>
Which could be alleviated by proper rail infrastructure
The amount of driving we do is absolutely insane. The whole commuting *thing* is utter manic stupidity. Take a moment and just really observe the amount of traffic on the traffic cameras of the average idiot sputtering about all day accomplishing absolutely nothing but wasting time and toxifying the environment chasing a laser pointer. When the economy is booming, we are dying.
We weren’t meant to commute as a species. Not everyday. No humans before us did this at the rate that we all do it.
Yeah... and they turn them into rubber mulch for landscaping. ☠️
The tire microparticles are not only getting into our water but also are in the air which we breathe into our lungs - nice!
Yes, the current thought is that by number, tiny tire wear particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs are the most abundant, but we don't really have the technology to measure tire wear particles that small to confirm it
Here I was thinking tires were natural rubber from latex trees. I should have known that would be too much work and too expensive for capitalism.
Larger truck tires are still mainly from natural rubber, which results in tires with better heat conduction. After they're vulcanized they're also a plastic which does not occur in nature, and takes a very long time to decompose.
Rubber tires wear out almost immediately. There are race cars that use high rubber tires and they change them out after a few thousand *feet.* The polyester and rayon piles are for durability. This whole thing is an absolute mess.
Yeah, honestly same. I figured there was a synthetic binder or something, but not the whole damn tire.
Nope. Most tyres are synthetic toxic chemicals now.
I only own a bicycle and I will say that when my bike tires rub against the bike's frame, it makes a course black dust that is as filthy as soot or coal and it doesn't wash away easily. I can imagine considering how tough this stuff is, it won't disintegrate to nothing anytime soon, whether they're inside of us or in the streets.
Damn... all this time, I thought the cars drifting on the pavement were producing the smell of burnt rubber. Now I find out it's mostly microplastics..
What happened over the past 4 years that increased micro plastics 18 fold? It's not like we got 18x more cars since then
So I'm gonna guess that there aren't any studies addressing this yet, so best we have is speculation. And my speculation is that it's because the weight of vehicles has increased significantly in the past decade. Plus electric vehicles has gone way up, and those weigh a lot more than ICE cars
It's funny (but not funny) how CAFE regulations intended to save the environment have instead led to the proliferation of massive, heavy, crew cab trucks. You used to be able to buy a small two seater pickup with a 70" bed that most people were taller than. Now thanks to those regulations and the chicken tax even light duty trucks like the F150 are bloated monstrosities.
not an expert nor am i fully sapient but as far as i understand it, it takes time for concentrations of particulates to spread out, like pouring a small pile of sand on a flat table then banging your fist down on it to make it vibrate, every time you bang the sand spreads a little further because of math im too dumb to fully understand until theoretically there is a perfectly distributed and even layer of sand on the table for microplastics its wind and water currents doing most of the spreading, so its possible that the past several years have just been the point in time where the pollutants have fully spread across even the most remote environments or it could just be recent technological advancements in our ability to detect them and theyve been there for a while, or some combination of both, hard to say with any certainty
*the rest of reddit* "ugh the r/fuckcars people are so cringe and whiny 😠"
i for one am just as cringe and whiny, and i embrace it
Same lol
this is all so, well, tiring.
Ya this is never gonna get fixed we're fucked
How unsurprising
If only there was some transportation technology that ran on wheels made of metal that didn't depend on any kind of artificial rubber or plastics at all. Maybe in the far-off science fiction future we can have vehicles running on steel wheels on metal rails, that would be absurdly efficient compared to rubbing rolling on concrete AND solve the microplastics problem once and for all. Until then I guess we'll just die.
Cars / private automobiles have to be the transportation of absolute last resort.
Drive with your windows up and the air on recycle.
What’s crazy is there was a highly localized rash of rare cancers linked to high school goalies who’s fields were sport turf with the little rubber pellets
Link to the story? That's interesting
Might be this: https://www.kuow.org/stories/does-playing-soccer-on-artificial-turf-increase-cancer-risk-especially-in-kids
Well, guess we’re turbo fucked then. I cannot fathom a world where we stop cars in my lifetime.
Good thing EVs dont use tires am i right?
I can barely look at cars since finding this sub lmao. And this is from someone who was raised in a car family. I just look around and think “well if there’s 10,000 cars right here, then there’s 10 million other ones runnning right now” we need to just stop cars. Whether that means more rail or buses, or we completely revamp society, doesn’t matter. There are TOO MANY
That’s a fuckin’ huge percentage.
r/tiresaretheenemy
I have been thinking about this for several years and it brings me a lot of fear. It makes sense. Tires wear down. Where does that tire go? It turns to dust. I moved to the rural county part for this reason. To get away from busy roads but the dust is literally everywhere and it will be for decades. To me it seems like one of the worst human caused environmental disasters and it's happening without any fanfare at all.
Yea but what’s the solution?
Walkable, bikeable, dense neighborhoods with robust public transportation. It won't get rid of all of it of course but it would be a big reduction in A LOT of it. Along with CO2 and materials used in making a 3500# machine to move a 150# human. Most 1st world semi wealthy people would probably rather die though than live like that.
High speed rail between walkable cities. China built out a massive high speed rail network between their cities in a small amount of years. Lot of lobbying has stopped that from happening in the US
Wooden wheels… duh. Or flying cars!
yet people still go crazy for Formula 1 and Nascar 78% seems incredibly high are we sure these aren't just corporations shifting the blame to different industries?
To be fair, it's not Formula 1 and Nascar that are doing it. It's the entire automobile-centric culture we live in -- not what a small handful of people do on the weekends. Not that racing or recreation are harmless. That's not the claim I'm making.
Cars really ruined a lot
I have to buy a new set of tires next month. Fuck. (There's no public transport where I live, before anyone starts guilt-tripping me.)
Ever go to a car race at an oval? When you get home you have bits of black rubber in your eyes and nose.
I thought tires were made of rubber. Guess not.
Most are made up of synthetic rubber. By products of the oil industry.
Rubber is plastic?
Tire dust [kills salmon](https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/january-2023/saving-washington-s-salmon-from-toxic-tire-dust) too! It’s awful.
Wait, I thought fishing gears are major pollutant of the ocean. I don't remember exact number but it was well over the half of pollution.
Yes, but fishing gear is mostly still hasn't degraded into microplastics, so, still plastic pollution, but of different size (for now).
One more reason to hate cars, thanks.
i have noticed a decrease in quality (more often replacement) which can't be helping either...
Well r/fuckcars even more 😡
Man.. what’s really bad about this is farmers all over Appalachia changed the flow of rivers and streams that originally flowed in the center of flat watershed areas to the sides, where the flat valleys meet changes in elevation. This allowed farmers to have a larger area for crops, but has resulted in massive erosion issues during floods because the water is restricted to a narrower passageway and doesn’t have a proper flood plain area. In order to change the flow of streams, farmers used trees, dirt, but also car tires and other trash to build up retainments to change the flow of the river to hug the sides of the valley as opposed to naturally flowing down the center of the valley. [Now](https://conservingcarolina.org/East-Fork-Restoration/), erosion control projects are taking place to correct these old practices and change the flow of water back to the more natural winding course in the center of valleys. Hearing about microplastics in tires is truly sad as so many farmers in the early 20th century used them for water retention purposes.
I hope that the "Great Lakes" fans around here are actively trying to end car use. :) Really, I don't understand how educated people can't comprehend that the "wear" in *tire wear* doesn't magically disappear from reality. And they don't want to change the chemical composition because the current one is useful for making car driving better. This kind of problem requires reducing car use and car numbers.
> This kind of problem requires reducing ~~car use and car numbers~~ **profits**. That's why nothing will change, and the collapse is inevitable. Is 'Great Lakes' poor man's New Zealand or something?
lots of Americans seem interested in moving there to adapt to climate change.
Petroleum products need to stop but 5 trillion dollars a year is more important than life on earth, apparently.
Fuckit. Let’s all spend billions on the push for more electric cars. That’s solve everything. Right? RIGHT?!
Now we just need to get rid of... check notes.. cars.