• GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    so plastic floating in a salty ocean, being hit with wave after wave of hundreds if not thousands of tons of pressure 24 hours a day 7 days a week for literal decades all while slamming into other plastic bottles will release less plastic than tires?

    IDK. I think a wider study should be done.

    50-75 trillion pieces of plastic exist in the ocean today and makes up 80% of all marine pollution.

    plastic itself isn’t easily recycled either. tires on vehicles can be reliably recycled into other products like asphalt, roof shingles, new tires, etc.

    I think if the concern is about microplastics, there are bigger pollutants at hand that need attention before car tires.

    • JustTesting@lemmy.hogru.ch
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      23 days ago

      One question that’d be interesting to know the answer to is where it ends up at. I could imagine microplastics from the garbage island mostly staying around the island, whereas ones from tires will end up all over the environment.