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Manufacturers aren’t making tires and then turning them into microplastics alone. Pretending consumers aren’t part of the problem is misleading.

We could add fees to tire manufacturers, but be honest: It will just get added to the price of the tire. That’s fine if the goal is economic incentives or funding remediation, but people start to lose interest in such fines as soon as they realize it comes out of their own pockets instead of from some imagined slush fund manufacturers are keeping to themselves. (See similar problems with conversations about tariffs, which people only like until they realize they will be paying for them.)

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BriggyDwiggs42 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Manufacturers don’t make tires expecting them to not be driven on, so that’s besides the point, but regardless.

The goal should be to tax manufacturers so that there’s a strong incentive/an opportunity for market competition to produce tires that don’t shed microplastics.

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meowkit 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Its just one disincentive. Tax driving overall to push people to more efficient (from a tire plastic/energy usage) standpoint.

Use those taxes to fund public transportation.

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brianwawok 14 hours ago | parent [-]

America generally isn’t laid out that well for public transit. You could build it and have it for free, in many places no one would ride it.

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nox101 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

plenty of places in America could have far better public transportation than they do. Take the Bay Area vs Switzerland

Size: Switzerland 15,940 mi², Bay Area 6,966 mi²

Population: Switzerland 8.85 million, Bay Area 7.76 million

So given that, the bay area is twice as dense as Switzerland

Miles of train tracks: Switzerland 3,241 miles, Bay Area ~300 miles?

SF Bay Area has a bay, Switzerland is all mountains so it's not like Switzerland is particularly easier to cover in public transportation

Plenty of other places in the USA could be covered in trains. LA for example used to have the largest public transit system in the world. It was all torn down between ~1929 and ~1975. A few lines have been created since but, the problem in the USA is, except for maybe NYC and Chicago, public transportation is seen as a handout to poor people instead of the transit the masses use like most saner places. (Most cities in Europe and Asia). Getting it back to that point seems nearly impossible. Building one track at a time, each taking 10-20 years with Nimbys fighting them all the way means the density of tracks always is too small to be useful, and so no usage.

	▲	rsanek 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		is there a statistic that can show us the density distribution? my intuition says that the bay area would have a pretty gradual slope (people living mostly everywhere of mostly low density), whereas Switzerland would have lots of areas mostly uninhabited while having a few high concentration cities. looking at the two respective largest cities: Zurich is about twice as densely populated as San Jose. this has a huge impact on public transit viability.

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CalRobert 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

True, America bulldozed their cities to build parking lots and roads, which made them much worse for anything but driving.

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lotsofpulp 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Public transit only works if people don’t have an option for private travel in a luxurious car.

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FredPret 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You also need law and order. Years ago living in Toronto, I stopped taking transit when the crazies started getting on the train along with the innocent commuters.

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rscho 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You never went to western Europe or rich Asian countries ? You should try it and see for yourself.

	▲	lotsofpulp 10 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I have, and everywhere people use public transit, it’s far more expensive or tedious to use a nice, big car. The houses, driveway, garage, and parking situation are inferior to those of 90% of the US, where you can easily take a Ford F150 or full size SUV almost anywhere you want. Cars need space. Walking and bicycling (and public transit) need density. The environment for optimizing for each of those is completely opposite. And once a person has invested in a car (the car itself and a home with enough space to store the car), and they use that car on a daily basis to commute to work or drop the kids off at school, they will be very unlikely to support taxes to pay for public transit, something they will almost never use, since they are already leaving the house in a car, they are going to do all their errands while out in a car.
	▲	fosk 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Different population (and business) density for most of America which is entirely suburban except for the dangerous downtown areas.

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amrocha 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Making driving way more expensive takes care of that.

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CalRobert 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Weirdly the Dutch take the train plenty and also have lots of cars

	▲	amanaplanacanal 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And also have the best bike infrastructure in the world. I wonder how the average car miles driven per year compares between the Netherlands and, say, the US.

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adrianN 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is evidence all around the world that this is not true.

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ihm 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Consumers are not part of the problem. There is literally no action a consumer can take to ameliorate this situation because there are no tires produced that don't have this problem, and many consumers need to have a car to live.

	▲	amanaplanacanal 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure there is. Drive less, walk and take public transportation more. People can change their behavior if they are incentivized to do so. And as others are pointing out, buy and drive smaller cars.