Tire rubber accounts for about 25-30% of all microplastic emmission on land. But we are talking about Q-tips and putting filters into washing machines, because the car lobby successfully stirred the discourse away from themselves.
The mass loss between a new tire and a bald one would indicate over a liter of rubber goes somewhere, none of the options are particularly good.
The good option is lighter vehicles and fewer miles travelled by road.
Maybe if we reduced the number of wheels to two and made them skinny it would also help. Since it’s light, we could probably move it with our own power instead of an engine.
The benefit is that we would also get some fresh air and exercise.
I hope something like this gets invented some day but I suppose one can only dream.
Sounds amazing and I hope one gets invented, but there is another solution as well:
You could make the wheels out of steel and run them on a narrow road also made of steel instead of oil byproducts, so they would wear out much slower, and any dust would be similar to naturally ocurring iron oxides (becoming relatively inert once it mixed with mud even if there was still some respiratory risk). It would be better suited to higher speeds and big loads and would compliment the other invention (maybe you could even put the small two wheeled car on the big steel wheeled car). Some kind of self-driving system would also be necessary to keep everyone safe
One could only dream such a thing existed. I’d name it steely wheel booo booooo fire eyes.
I think it should be called something with pods and hyper in the name.
