> because the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse.
The problem is that landfills aren't living up to their names. They aren't being filled in and buried. Burying plastic is the best thing you can do to dispose of it. It's only when they're left in the open air to break down and be spread all over the oceans by wind that you have a problem.
Quite the opposite actually. Tires are already a huge source of microplastics pollution. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664766/
> because the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse.
The problem is that landfills aren't living up to their names. They aren't being filled in and buried. Burying plastic is the best thing you can do to dispose of it. It's only when they're left in the open air to break down and be spread all over the oceans by wind that you have a problem.