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> the solution is natural rubber, which costs slight more than synthetic rubber but lasts longer. So its better for consumers, cheaper all around, and 1,000x better for the environment

Is it? I'm Googling but can't find any evidence for that.

Natural rubber tires still produce tons of dust, I can't find any reference to it being less harmful in our lungs, and even natural tire rubber seems to biodegrade on the order of thousands of years.

Natural tire rubber is still extremely processed. It's nothing like the raw latex that comes out of the plant.

So how is it 1000x better for the environment? Or even 2x better, honestly?

I'd love to believe it, but I'm surprised I can't find any references easily. Everything I can find refers to it being more sustainable to manufacture. Nothing about its effects on pollution.

One is a closed system, the other is dumping NEW carbon into the air. The simple accounting is:

Plant a seed that grows to a dry weight of 1 lb. That is basically 1 lb of carbon.

Turn that into 0.5 lb of rubber. Grind that rubber back down to carbon and we are back to where we started minus the waste.

Is the problem "net carbon", or is it "hey there is 100nm carbon particles entering my brain from my lungs" ? I feel like it's the latter ? And I'm not sure how natural rubber is gonna stop that ?

I thought you were trying to address dust?

> I'm Googling but can't find any evidence for that.

I'm sorry, but the parent poster said they have been studying in this domain for 4+ years (including PhD research), and you present doubt because your Google searches are unconvincing?

What would it take to convince you?

You do realize that what you find on the first 10 pages of Google (or other) search engines could be junk or intentionally targeted misinformation, right?

It's doubtful if you know even a basic bit of chemistry. Vulcanized rubber is a crosslinked thermoset polymer that is very difficult to break down, regardless of whether it is natural or synthetic in origin. It's going to produce roughly the same amount of microplastic per amount of tire. Lets say natural rubber lasts 2x as long, that's half as much microplastic, not 1/1000th. I get that GP is being hyperbolic, but natural rubber is incrementally better (at best) than synthetic, not revolutionarily better.

A careful reading will reveal that the parent poster merely said they spent 4 years doing PhD research, and during that time, also indirectly looked at things somewhat related to tire research.

I don't know how much time you've spent in academia, but when I wrote my thesis, there were a couple "indirect" things like that that I could sound knowledgeable on but really knew no more about than someone could learn in an hour of internet reading if they really tried.

A source is what it would take to convince me, not an internet commenter claiming to have googled something during their school years.

This is the internet. Doubt everything, always.

> Goodyear, Firestone and Michelin flat out refuse to fund research or even block innovation

What's in it for them? Keeping bad press about tires out of the public view? Fear of lower profit margins?

Can natural rubber be made as soft as synthetic rubber? What kind of rubber is used on race cars (and dirt bikes)? Cost is much less of an issue for those markets.

Natural rubber is used extensively in higher-end applications (race cars, trucks, aircraft). However, almost all tires are some hybrid of the two. Generally, natural rubber is used in the construction of the tire "carcass" and sidewalls while synthetic rubber (compounded with a gazillion and one other things) is used to construct the tread.

The basic issues are pretty intuitive:

* The supply of natural rubber is constrained by the ability to grow the plants which produce it.

* It's hard to make synthetic rubber with polymer chains as long as those in natural rubber (isoprene), so natural rubber tends to be more pliable and stronger, while synthetic rubber (styrene) tends to sheer off into microparticles.

* However, natural rubber degrades more rapidly when heated and cooled, and is more difficult to control in order to achieve a desired level of stickiness at a given temperature (which is basically what tires are aiming for).

I think that OP's research would be quite interesting to learn about more, as my understanding is that tire manufacturers employ hundreds of chemists who are dedicated full-time to attempting to replicate natural rubber synthetically in an efficient way.

> (For anyone that cares, the solution is natural rubber, which costs slight more than synthetic rubber but lasts longer. So its better for consumers, cheaper all around, and 1,000x better for the environment but Goodyear, Firestone and Michelin flat out refuse to fund research or even block innovation in natural rubber.

I’m skeptical. Wikipedia says:

> Synthetic rubbers are superior to natural rubbers in two major respects: thermal stability, and resistance to oils and related compounds. [1]

What are they missing?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_rubber

Would it be still cheaper if all tires are made from natural rubber. We shouldn't have old forests destroyed for rubber plantations.

There are two main working solutions that have ALREADY been used and proven to work since WWII.

First: a fungal disease has wiped out ALL the rubber trees in south america, thats why we cant grow in it the Western hemisphere, a fungus. If we could grow it here we would and it would drop the price by A LOT. But, we already have a solution, a transgenic species that is resistant, nonsense Government regulation and moronic "public opinion" is the only thing stopping this from fixing the rubber problem overnight.

Second: sounds funny, but ever break a dandelion stem in half and see the white stuff come out? That latex, PURE high quality latex. Let that latex air dry and you rubber! No refinement necessary. During WWII they supplied most of the war effort with rubber from dandelions! Yes, it works, its not efficient but progress has been made and with ANY funding at all it could easily produce enough higher quality natural rubber for ALL our need and enough to export.

The ONLY problem is that companies make too much money producing low quality "disposable" tires that they will NEVER switch.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6073688/ [2] https://hcs.osu.edu/our-people/dr-katrina-cornish

Well you can't make things TOO good! How else would you sell more shit to the proles?

We were (or at least I was) told in school that capitalism allowed our civilization to make and sell things we used to only dream about. And when I learned the truth, it was that capitalism was only concerned with how much to sell. If that meant making your products cheaper/worse/less durable on a creeping basis, then that's what the company did.

Capitalism itself is subject to enshittification that affects all products and services.

Fascinating fact about dandelions! A nice Fraunhofer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvVJL2GYRHY

There are many people who would be willing to buy these tires if your claims of being more cost-effective and better for the environment are actually true. You have a PhD in this, so why aren’t you doing it?

"Rubber Made From Dandelions is Making Tires More Sustainable – Truly a Wondrous Plant" (2021) https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/dandelions-produce-more-sust... :

[I'll leave in the hashtags from when I wrote this up to remind myself at the time:]

#DandelionRubber Tires; #Taraxagum

> Aiding the bees and our environment

> Now, Continental Tires is producing #dandelion rubber tires called #Taraxagum (which is the genus name of the species). The bicycle version of their tires even won the German #Sustainability Award 2021 for sustainable design.,

> “The fact that we came out on top among 54 finalists shows that our Urban Taraxagum bicycle tire is a unique product that contributes to the development of a new, alternative and sustainable supply of raw materials,” stated Dr. Carla Recker, head of development for the Taraxagum project.

> The report from DW added that the performance of dandelion tires was better in some cases than natural rubber—which is typically blended with synthetic rubber.

> Capable of growing, as we all know, practically anywhere, dandelion needs very little accommodation in a country or business’s agriculture profile. The #Taraxagum research team at Continental hypothesizes they could even be grown in the polluted land on or around old industrial parks.

> Furthermore, the only additive needed during the rubber extraction process is hot #water, unlike Hevea which requires the use of organic solvents that pose a pollution risk if they’re not disposed of properly.

> Representing a critical early-season food supply for dwindling #bees and a valuable source of super-nutritious food for humans, dandelions can also be turned into coffee, give any child a good time blowing apart their seeds—and, now, as a new source for rubber in the world; truly a wondrous plant.

Taraxacum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taraxacum

A less hashtag version: https://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/CropOp/en/indus_misc/chemical/r...

Other Common Names Include: Dandelion, Kazak dandelion, TKS, rubber root. Latin Name: Taraxacum kok-saghyz

Dandelion roots also contain substantial amounts of the starch inulin, which can be fermented to produce fuel ethanol.

USDA Report from 1947 entitled "Russian Dandelion, an Emergency Source of Natural Rubber" https://archive.org/details/russiandandelion618whal/page/n1/...

Interestingly my great grandfather headed up research efforts on breeding fungal resistant rubber trees at a national research institute in now Sri Lanka. Man he'd be rolling in his grave at the thought of public opinion and cheap (and non-biodegradable) synthetics holding back natural rubber production.

Synthetic rubber being the largest microplastic source in the world is an incredibly stroke of irony. Reminds me of us discovering that adding tetra ethyl lead to fuel might not be a wonderful idea.

If I want to buy a good-for-the environment tire, what should I buy? I don’t care about the price unless it’s insane

Keep your tires properly inflated. Go easy on the accelerator and brake pedal. You'll be doing much more than the average person.

Something with a low durometer that rides harsh. Ironically may be worse gas mileage than other tires.

Steel wheels.

Schwalbe :-)

Why would natural rubber be better then synthetic rubber for this problem? Asbestos is natural and toxic as hell.

Natural rubber currently has the property of being mostly inside trees not being ground up into a fine powder - but there's no obvious reason at scale it would be any better except in terms of "slightly less wear over time".

Is it's chemistry fundamentally different?

Chemically speaking, how is natural rubber different from plastic while still having such similar properties?

Great question! Its super simple, it is ONLY the length of the hydrocarbon chain, a better quality natural rubber has really long chains (10,000+ atoms long) that last a LONG time and are VERY stretchy. Synthetic rubber (or plastic) is shorter (1,000 atoms long) and doesn't last as long.

Thats it, it is the exact same "product" just a chain that gets longer and longer and changes its physical properties as it grows.

Noob here, but aren’t the best tires made from natural rubber? Or am I mistaken?

It's more than just the chain length. The most common synthetic rubbers are styrene-butadiene copolymers. Natural rubber is polyisoprene. While it is true that shorter chain synthetic polyisoprene is available, it is a much smaller part of the market than styrene-butadiene.

Does look like both natural and synthetic polyisoprene is at-least somewhat biodegradeable: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC92035/

Genuinely interested here. If natural rubber and plastic are exactly the same thing, then why is natural rubber being advocated as a much more environmentally sound alternative? Would'nt the dust from natural rubber tyres be just as problematic as the plastic is now?

Yes this is exactly my question as well.

Is the dust just as bad for the environment, but natural rubber wears more slowly due to the longer chains?

Or is the dust somehow a less harmful kind of dust?

natural = good; synthetic = bad (◔_◔)

We already use a lot of natural rubber in tyres. At least in the winter here in Norway. And those tyres are made by Nokian, Michelin et al.

I wonder if there’s a conflict between companies being willing and able to produce natural rubber tires yet marketing them would also implicate themselves in knowingly destroying the environment. It’s a tough line to straddle.

I'm curious to hear some thoughts of an expert - how much does natural rubber reduce the pollution for 100 miles driven by a tyre? Can you think of any alternative technical solutions? Can you think of any political solutions?

Sounds like a job for EU.