Image

Ads help us keep this site online

Listen: Award winners dream up microplastic solution

21st September 2020
Posted by Ros Connors

This year’s national winners of the James Dyson Award claim to have found a way to drastically reduce microplastic particles from worn tyres – the second biggest microplastic problem facing the world today and a major contributor to air and ocean pollution.

The device has been created by The Tyre Collective, students from Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art joint Innovation Design Engineering MSc programme. It takes advantage of various airflows around a spinning wheel to collect approximately 60% of all airborne particles which are released as the tyres wear through use.  

These particles account for up to 50% of PM2.5 pollution from road transport with more swept into waterways, making them the second largest microplastic pollutant in our oceans after single-use plastic. 

Every time a vehicle brakes, accelerates or turns a corner, the tyres wear down and tiny particles become airborne. More than 500,000 tonnes of tyre particles are produced each year in Europe alone, with the problem only set to get worse because heavier batteries installed in electric vehicles will mean more particles are projected.

Ros spoke to Siobhan Anderson and Hugo Richardson from The Tyre Collective: