Reminder that the biggest by far source of micro plastic in the air we breathe comes from tires. And there is zero research being done to find an alternative
It's second to synthetic textiles
Edit. in the ocean
https://www.horiba.com/int/scientific/resources/science-in-action/where-do-microplastics-come-from/
Thanks for providing the article, was an interesting read
Yeah but synthetic textile is very broad and can be many products across different industries. A tire is an end product and if you find an alternative for that, you knock off the most contributing product of micro plastic.
We already have a way to solve this, just don't drive so much.
Metal tires and metal roads. Kind of slippery, so we might need to make some sort of ridges to guide our vehicle's direction. Stopping will still be hard, but if we just lock cars together and do it all at once it might be feasible.
Damn u had me confused till the last line. Well played.
When the petrol car ban comes in, this could take care of itself as everybody finds themselves priced out of driving.
We'll need a really good public transport system to replace it, but we won't get that either because we're too poor to care about.
A lot of people are already priced out of driving. We need to be building that public transport network, along with active transport infrastructure and better land use anyway.
With petrol you can always get a £500 banger, run it into the ground over the next year or two and repeat.
With electric it starts at about 5000-6000, and you'll be paying £500 a year just to rent the battery. It's the batteries that are going to keep that out of reach of the poorest.
And you still need insurance, fuel etc on top of that, and your £500 banger isn't going to be very reliable.
You can get a decent bike for £50 or a bus ticket for £2. The problem is in a lot of the country it isn't safe to cycle and the buses are shit, so we need to fix those things to have transport that works for everyone (and doesn't create microplastics).
@Lemmylaugh @Emperor
The tire companies researched and innovated for EV tyres, and that reduces shedding.
It's heartening to see that a small change can make such a big difference. Good luck trying to get the Tories to take that message onboard though.
I was surprised myself, 10p a time adds up. Being so cheap it was easy enough to carry 2 large clothe bags in my backpack everywhere. Saved a fortune over the years over paying for plastic bags.
I honestly don't even usually want a bag.
But it's the default and I'm too lazy to tell them I don't need one every time. Making it not the default is plenty.
What is missed in this article is bags for life purchases. We saw the same article more or less in 2019 and once you factored that in there wasn't much of an improvement in plastic use or disposal. Expect the same to appear after this article at some point.
A reusable plastic bag only needs to be reused ~40 times before it is better than single use plastic bags. Are people really using them so few times that they can't hit that?
All the data says that no, people are not reusing them.
Anecdotally, it makes sense. You left your bag in the trunk, or at home, or it turns out you got slightly too many groceries, or you're staying at a friend's house and you pop out to get some groceries and don't have your bag...
Well that's a shame. I guess living in a car-centric region it's easy for me to just throw them in the trunk so I always have them, but I could imagine if I was taking public transit more often it would be easier to forget them.
I wonder how Walmart is going to implement and they switched most of their check out lines to self checkout.
Self serving checkouts ask you how many bags you want and charge for them in the UK. I have seen a growth in adults using backpacks, it wasn't the norm before the bag charge.
Yeah I use my backpack, much better for carrying heavy groceries
I was in Maine recently and they charge for bags there. At Walmart, the self checkout staff member was also selling bags to the people who needed them, in addition to monitoring everything else that happens at self checkout.
I see. Thank you. I like the no bags thing. Costco and Aldi have been doing it for years and I never minded it
The supermarket close to my home has self checkout, you just have to scan the bag in addition to your products.
In Canada we just fully banned plastic bags. Walmart just doesn't offer any bags at self checkout anymore besides the reusable ones. It's kind of annoying if you forget to bring bags but it's not a huge deal. If I'm walking I'll just fill my personal grocery cart, or if I'm driving I'll just throw everything loose in my car. If I do need a bag I'll just spend $0.25 on a reusable bag.
It's really not a big deal like a lot of people expected
I’m in a conservative small town. My Walmart no longer even sells one use grocery bags! They had signs up for a couple months before hand.
Tesco and Sainsbury's usually just have the bags at the entrance to the self checkout and you just scan the bag before using it.
The county north of the one I live in decided to just ban them completely. So the big chain store that used to have free paper or plastic bags switched to charging for the paper bags.
This seems like such a better idea.
General community for news/discussion in the UK.
Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.
Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.