Note that this is ranked by units produced, and the Lego tires are for their toy kits. It's kind of silly to compare their production against Michelin, Bridgestone, et al.
An interesting list would be tyre manufacturers by total load bearing capacity produced. For example, if a manufacturer makes 500 tyres, each of which can support 1000kg, they get a score of 500 x 1000 = 500000. It'd be a cool list because it might throw up some unexpected results, due to tyres for odd applications.
The next three by units (Bridgestone, Michelin, Goodyear) all do commercial/industrial/aviation, I think Goodyear falls out a bit at the top end. 400 tonne trucks use Bridgestone/Michelin, the Airbus A380 uses Bridgestone, for what it's worth.
Why is nobody talking about the horrifying impact that this is having on the environment? All of these plastic pieces will end up in the trash. In other words, in our environment. That doesn't even take into account the pollution from the manufacturing process. And we call this progress or innovation? Please stop making this garbage.
Among the reasons are that the Lego Group is doing their best to prevent such impact. 88%* of the waste plastic from the production. Their products, in sharp contrast to all other toys, can be assembled and disassembled ad infinitum, they can easily be combined with all other Lego products and the high-durability means that Lego is more often resold or donated rather than disposed.
On the other hand, do you have any examples of this "horrifying impact"?
* I remember being told it was a 99% figure, but the Group's website [0] lists 88%
It's "tire" in Canada, but our Commonwealth status has stopped meaning anything at all. We owe more to our American cultural ties than to our historical monarchy and our tendency towards UK English.
That really depends, because "British spelling" isn't an all-or-nothing thing -- many of the Commonwealth countries show broad variation in how much they adhere to the traditional UK spellings.
Thus, for example, Australia has a Labor party, not a Labour party (while neighbor New Zealand does have a Labour party), and typically sends people to jail instead of to gaol. Canada usually has tires instead of tyres, and Canadians realize things instead of realising them.
The ALP (Australian Labor Party) changed the spelling of their name deliberately in 1912 order to distinguish it from the general labour movement and also to make them appear more progressive and modern by using the American spelling.
It's probably worth noting that "gaol" hasn't been common in British English for some time. A search of the BBC news site reveals "jail" being used almost daily while "gaol" is only used to refer to historical buildings which are now closed.
Well, on etymologic grounds, "gaol" is closer to French (goale, while the pronunciation is different) than the Old English equivalent (gaylle, gaille, gaile) - so jail is somewhat closer to the Old English, in form and pronunciation.
Not sure about NZ & Oz but you would never see it written "tyre" in Canada and I bet most Canadian's would have no idea "tyre" was an alternative spelling for tire.
In Australia it's spelled "tire" as far as I know. I've never really seen the spelling "tyre" used here before, hence invalidating the claim that any country that relies on British spelling all use the same spellings for words.
Now here's a case where having points visible would help those not-in-the-know to see what those-who-are-in-the-know think of the he said/she said between DigitalSea and hartror above
Given you can't see points, hartror is correct, and here's a collection of tyre retailer names as evidence
I will openly admit in front of you all that I was wrong. I've lived in Australia all of my life, Queensland to be exact. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, I was almost convinced that it was spelled "tire" not "tyre" but you people are correct. No offence taken.
