You can weigh new tires and compare them to weights of replaced tires. That would give you the low end estimate environmental tire microplastics deposited based on tire sales. I can’t imagine its not a massive number.
Yes, it is. But compared to all plastics production it’s not a third. Much like clothes aren’t a third either.
But they both release microplastics directly into the air & water, so they enter the circulation quicker. The printer that is gonna end on a landfill will be in the balls of creatures millennia from now.
Supposedly you can recycle them, but normally they will be confined to a a small section of landfill. While “on a landfill” is not a good answer, it’s much better than “in the environment “
You could even argue that leachate is “good” in that it pulls all these contaminants out of the landfill to a concentrated place where they could in theory be removed (and placed in a landfill 🤪)
Landfills at least in the us absolutely are designed to encapsulate waste, to minimize leachate and to control runoff. The whole point is to bury it in a way that it will tend to stay buried.
There is evidence of paper not decomposing because it doesn’t get enough oxygen or water for microbes to do their thing
You can weigh new tires and compare them to weights of replaced tires. That would give you the low end estimate environmental tire microplastics deposited based on tire sales. I can’t imagine its not a massive number.
Yes, it is. But compared to all plastics production it’s not a third. Much like clothes aren’t a third either.
But they both release microplastics directly into the air & water, so they enter the circulation quicker. The printer that is gonna end on a landfill will be in the balls of creatures millennia from now.
That printer is not “micro”, it won’t shed detectably, and it will be confined to one part of a landfill
Toner is basically bulk microplastic.
Supposedly you can recycle them, but normally they will be confined to a a small section of landfill. While “on a landfill” is not a good answer, it’s much better than “in the environment “
You could even argue that leachate is “good” in that it pulls all these contaminants out of the landfill to a concentrated place where they could in theory be removed (and placed in a landfill 🤪)
You can’t recycle them (very poorly at best, with extra harmful byproducts).
And landfills are not built like nuclear waste storage facilities.
Everything around us is ‘the environment’.
Landfills at least in the us absolutely are designed to encapsulate waste, to minimize leachate and to control runoff. The whole point is to bury it in a way that it will tend to stay buried.
There is evidence of paper not decomposing because it doesn’t get enough oxygen or water for microbes to do their thing