Mar 19: On the Road

Following on from yesterday's piece on everyday encounters with lorries, you can also see links with car travel as well. The pandemic has put a halt to driving lessons (including my son's) and also created a backlog of hundreds of thousands of driving tests. It's an everday experience for many to get behind the wheel of a car.

This Guardian article explores how people who have been starved of driving opportunities are planning to drive more in the future...

Car tyres have also been confirmed again as a major source of microplastics in the oceans, although fashion still provides more microplastics when items are washed. This means that every mile driven makes an everyday contribution to ocean plastics.

There are many hundreds of millions of miles driven by motorists each year and each mile you drive, the tyres wear down. That lost material doesn't just disappear, it goes onto the road surface, and then gets washed off by rain into drains, or otherwise onto the ground, from which it ends up in nearby rivers. From there it goes to the sea at some point, and adds to the trillions of tiny pieces of plastic in the world's oceans.

Prior to the lockdown I started work on a resource with a local company which has been making huge steps towards becoming carbon neutral. I hope to continue that in the Summer and get the resource out there for people to use, and also restart the planned events once we are able to.