Hacker News Reader

There's a lot more to tires than rubber:

https://www.ustires.org/whats-tire-0

Synthetic fibers include Rayon, Nylon, Polyester, Acrylic, and Spandex among the more widely used ones

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

These are the fibers in the reinforcing bands and rims, right? Those are buried under the rubber and if your tire is shedding material from those bands then your tire must be truly worn to nothing. I think the vast majority of material shed from tires must be the rubber itself.

Illustration of a tire cross section: https://www.michelintruck.com/img/tires/xze-zoomer.jpg

I think the point of the second part was that a lot of textiles are made of plastic fibers

Reply on news.ycombinator.com