Episode 153

[FOCUS] Running Shoes, Tyres and Microplastics

Episode Summary: This episode revisits a previous conversation focusing on microplastics in the oceans, particularly those originating from running shoes and tyre erosion. 

Olabanji and Leekei discuss the significant issue of plastics from these sources leaching into the biosphere. Key findings include:

  • between 15-31% of microplastics are in the oceans
  • main sources of microplastics are from: laundering of synthetic clothes (35% of primary microplastics); abrasion of tyres through driving (28%); intentionally added microplastics in personal care products, for example microbeads in facial scrubs (2%)

source: European Parliement

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Don’t Take Our Word For It, Look It Up!

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Featuring Carbon Almanac Contributors Leekei Tang and Olabanji Stephen

Leekei is a fashion business founder, a business coach, an international development expert and podcaster from Paris, France.

Olabanji is from Lagos Nigeria, he’s a Creative Director and visual designer that helps brands gain clarity, deliver meaningful experiences and build tribes through Design & Strategy. He founded Jorney - a community designed to help people stay productive, accountable, and do their best work

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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.

Transcript
Speaker:

I've told you, I did, um, workshops

on plastics the other day, and I

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kept talking about this all the time

because I find it so fascinating.

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I had this conversation with someone at

the workshop, about running shoes because.

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I'm a runner and I know that I need

, change my shoes every couple of months

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there's a like, you know, a certain

kind of mileage, but I don't go buy this

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because I think it's marketing thing to

make you buy, to make you buy more shoes.

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So after a while, I know that

I need to change my running

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shoes because the so is, um, is.

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Used.

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Yeah.

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And um, so I was telling this person

at the workshop that, yeah, see

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that's a lot of shoes to recycle.

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But then he said, Yeah, why don't

you look a little bit closer at your

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shoes and think of, of the souls and

they're used and what happened to the

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souls of your issues when they're.

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Because of the friction.

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So it creates very, very

small parts of plastics.

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And then what happened to

these plastics, these pieces of

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microplastics, it gets washed down

the road and it ends up in the oceans.

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Yeah, that's fascinating.

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I've never thought of it.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Cause and it makes total sense, right?

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Cause like where does all the plastic go?

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And most shoes, the, so of most

shoes are made from plastic.

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Where does all the tires also go?

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Because, yes, all tires

are made of plastic.

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Even the car company tells you to

change your tire after period of time.

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And in some parts of the

world, people don't even obey

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that as much as they should.

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But like, where does all that plastic go?

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It's actually, it's fascinating

because then the rain comes.

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Like you said, and then it washes

them down from the road and, and

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the end up in the ocean and causing

like, how many percent did you say?

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Well, I, yeah, I, I got this number, which

is, I don't even have words for that.

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Is that 28% of microplastics in

the ocean comes from tire tires.

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Tires, yeah.

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Tires.

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So cars, Wow.

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28% of microplastics in the ocean.

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That's interesting.

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Yeah.

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You know that, you know, I don't

drive, so I don't know, but you

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probably know better than me.

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Um, that tires, um, friction when you use

a car, friction on tire and it loses Yeah.

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10% of this weight

before people changes us.

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So just imagine 10% of the weight of

your tide goes into waterways and then

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eventually in oceans, in microplastics.

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That's fascinating and quite interesting.

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But, but what can we do about that?

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Is there, Maybe we should

stop driving altogether.

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No, no, no, no.

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Well, well that's, But, but,

but what can, what can we do?

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Yeah.

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What can we do?

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What can we do?

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Just wait.

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Okay.

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Maybe before we talk about

solutions, uh, like I have some

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more bad news about, Uh oh, . Yeah.

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Okay.

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I'm looking at my notes and, uh,

actually, I realize that there's

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some more bad news about tires.

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Um, the bad news is that tires are very

difficult to recycle, uh, as plastics.

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Hmm.

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Because not all plastics can be recycled.

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And, uh, so we cannot use the

used tires to make new tires.

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That's basically the thing.

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every year there's 1.5 billion tires

are discarded in the world every year.

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Hold on, say that again.

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1.5 billion.

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1.5 billion tires are

discarding every year, but wow.

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We need to find ways to reuse the.

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One of the way of using tires is to, uh,

recycle them and make them playgrounds.

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Like, I don't know if you've

Yeah, it's um, it's a, they use

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a kind of, um, on playgrounds.

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They have a, they put a very special

thing on the, on the ground for kids not

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to when they fall, not to hurt too badly.

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So there's one way of recycling.

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Yeah.

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But not everybody does that.

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They also use tires for

training, military training.

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And then there's this thing in Nigeria,

I don't know if all the parts of the

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world do it, but they call it tire.

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So it's gotten from the word

furniture, . Um, so , Okay, so instead

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of furniture, they call it tire.

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So they make seats and living room,

decoration and stool, and a lot,

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lots of nice stuff with, with tires.

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Mm-hmm.

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. Yeah.

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And so what can we do?

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That's the, that's the question.

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What can we do?

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Yeah.

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What can we do

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