Santa Cruz Auto Repair

A while back we wrote about Goodyear using dandelion latex instead of tree harvested latex in order to produce tires with sustainable materials. Well, recently Goodyear announced that they created a tire that consists of 90% sustainable materials. Apparently the tire materials include high recycled content steel, rice husk waste, pine resin, and soybean oil. It also uses recycled polyester. The tire is said to have passed regulatory tests, as well as Goodyear’s internal tests for durability and performance. We don’t know how long it will take for Goodyear to organize supply chain that would allow it to scale production, but we expect it will be a while before Goodyear Tires and Auto Repair in Santa Cruz can offer you 90% sustainable tires. Ultimately, Goodyear wants to produce tires that are made 100% of sustainable-materials. Currently they offer no guidance as to when such tires may become a reality, but we applaud a lofty goal. Having said that, as soon as the 90% su ... read more

This is no an April Fool’s joke - Goodyear is partnering up with the US Department of Defense to make tires out of dandelions. More specifically, a variety of dandelion that was originally discovered in 1932 in Kazakhstan, and is known as TK. Apparently, it’s a pretty good substitute for a rubber tree. During the World War II, when supplies from South East Asia and South America were threatened, it was cultivated as a rubber tree substitute in the United States, the Soviet Union, England and Germany. If you remember your high school chemistry or biology lessons, when you pick a dandelion off your lawn, the milky white sap that comes out of the stems is latex – same stuff that comes out of the rubber tree and is used to make rubber. Yes, you need a lot of dandelions, or you need to find dandelion species with more latex. Or you could genetically engineer one – according to Mental Floss, German scientists came up with a genetically modified dandelion that produce ... read more