Also, while it certainly wouldn't surprise me if plastic roads produce more microplastics than plastic landfills, I wouldn't take it as given. Landfills aren't frozen in time, stuff degrades and gets blown around by wind, and I have no idea how the process of making a road affects the plastics and their capacity to degrade.
Oceanic plastic comes from 10 major rivers, 8 of them in Asia[1,2].
Which is to say, while landfill escape is certainly possible - when it comes to plastic, it's essentially not a problem at all compared to just the ongoing and continuous dumping of plastic into the oceans where it degrades to microplastics.
Landfills, properly managed (i.e. no liquid chemicals in them) are shaping up as the best option environmentally because they're local and while not completely frozen in time, certainly frozen enough. You dig up a landfill, you'll largely find...everything which was originally put into it.
The amount of pollution from individual private cars is nominal, but the amount of pollution from cars en masse (especially in concentrated road structures like highways) is substantial[1]. It becomes even more substantial when you mix in commercial car (read: diesel) traffic[2].
> If you live on an interstate, and don't want to, the best course of action is to move.
Sometimes you don't live on an interstate, but the interstate moves next to you anyways[1].
Other times, you live in a beautiful residential neighborhood (like I do), but 18-wheelers drive through your neighborhood and idle next to the public schools because there's no enforcement and it's convenient.
He got a high from breathing straight from the exhaust pipe. Then the Lord appeared to him and said, "And you shall make it known, on HN, that the exhaust pipe is not the enemy, but the friend."
Well, that's a different set of circumstances, where you've got a lot of very badly-made cars with ineffective emissions control systems running on very poor-quality fuel.
1. Getting hit by a car
2. Health impacts of car exhaust
3. Microplastics coming off the cars themselves (https://www.wired.com/story/microplastic-san-francisco-bay/)
4. Microplastics from the road
Also, while it certainly wouldn't surprise me if plastic roads produce more microplastics than plastic landfills, I wouldn't take it as given. Landfills aren't frozen in time, stuff degrades and gets blown around by wind, and I have no idea how the process of making a road affects the plastics and their capacity to degrade.