Enlarge / You'll notice the Forest Stewardship Council's logo on the sidewall to the right of the Pirelli logo. (credit: Pirelli)

Formula 1 is on a big sustainability kick. The race cars are switching to carbon neutral synthetic fuels . Teams are improving their logistics to cut freight emissions . Race tracks are starting to run entirely on solar power . And now, the tires that Pirelli brings to the races have been given the seal of approval by an NGO as meeting its standards for sustainable forestry.

It will be hard to spot when the cars are moving, but this year, you'll find a tree logo on the sidewall. That indicates that the natural rubber that went into making the tire has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Natural rubber makes up about 15 percent of the rubber in an F1 tire, with the rest being synthetic.

According to the FSC, natural rubber is a key driver of deforestry, as well as human rights abuses, particularly among the smallholders who farm 85 percent of the world's natural rubber. By putting its logo on the tire, the FSC says that Pirelli has met "the world's most credible standards for sustainable forestry," protecting both the forests and the forest communities' rights, including fair wages.

Enlarge / Sigh . Not only are the 225/45/R20 tires easy to puncture, they're not cheap. Smaller wheels would ride better and provide better efficiency. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

On Friday afternoon, I popped out of the house to run a quick errand. This week's press fleet car is a Hyundai Ioniq 5 , a boxy, angular, and efficient electric vehicle. I never quite made it to my intended destination, though; a very slightly misjudged corner—at low speed—saw me clip the curb with the back right wheel, resulting in a dime-sized hole in the sidewall and a frustrating couple of hours. Needless to say, there is no spare tire in an Ioniq 5, nor a can of get-you-home foam, not that it would have helped in this instance. But I can't help thinking all that stress could have been avoided if the car used smaller wheels and higher profile tires.

Of all the current automotive trends, the ever-increasing size of wheels and tires may be my least favorite. If you're middle-aged, you've probably been driving for a couple of decades now, during which time smaller wheel sizes have been disappearing even faster than the honey bees . Just try finding good 14-inch tires for an older Miata, for example. Or even 15s.

The increasing popularity of crossovers and SUVs is largely to blame, though not entirely. So, too, is the move to battery electric vehicles, which is ironic considering that increasing wheel size very clearly hurts efficiency and range, the two main considerations for many EV buyers.

Enlarge / This woody desert shrub called guayule could be coming to a tire near you before too long. (credit: Cassidy Araiza/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In 2022, the tire company Bridgestone used the IndyCar racing series to debut a new sustainable natural rubber that it has been testing as a replacement for less environmentally friendly rubber. The new tires used rubber from a desert shrub called guayule ( Parthenium argentatum ). Now, Bridgestone is ready to try the rubber in a more practical application and has produced a demonstration run of road-going tires using guayule rubber and a high percentage of recycled materials. The company will conduct tests with automakers to prove the concept.

The world produces about 2 billion tires each year, and while synthetic rubbers are used in modest amounts, most road tires use a lot of natural rubber from the para rubber tree ( Hevea brasiliensis ). But 90 percent of para rubber is grown in Southeast Asia and has to be shipped around the world to reach tire factories.

Bridgestone has been looking at guayule as an alternative for a little over a decade now. The guayule plant is a short, woody shrub that grows easily in the deserts of the American southwest and requires much less water than crops such as alfalfa or cotton, which are grown in places like Arizona, where Bridgestone has been breeding guayule and conducting research and development on its use in tire-making.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

One of the biggest promises of electric vehicles is that they provide relative freedom from constant car maintenance. Gone are oil and filter changes, spark plugs, tune-ups, diesel particulate traps, diesel exhaust aftertreatment fluid, and countless other parts to replace. There's not even so much as a muffler clamp to deal with.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to petrol-free motoring bliss. The final piece connecting the car to the road is still a tire, and it still flexes. It uses air and needs to be replaced every so often. And the demands a motor places on traction, load, and noise are quite unique if that motor whirs silently. There's no way around it: EVs require EV-specific tires.

How are tires for EVs different? We spoke to several tire companies to better understand what ingredients go into the tire oven in the first place and what development testing has proven before the tires hit the street.

Enlarge / A Firestone race tire made from guayule plants, pictured next to the little woody shrubs that made it possible. (credit: Bridgestone)

There's still a lot of petroleum hanging onto electric cars, specifically around the rims. It takes about seven gallons of oil to make each standard car tire , and the world produces more than 2 billion tires every year . Now, some tire companies are turning to a desert shrub and a novel means of pulling natural rubber compounds out of it.

Bridgestone Americas has been working with guayule ( Parthenium argentatum ) since 2012. The tire company broke ground on a research facility in Mesa, Arizona, in 2012, started evaluating sample tires in 2015, and received multiple grants from the US Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Energy for its research and molecular breeding work. Just last month, the company committed another $42 million to expanding its harvesting partnerships, with 350 acres in the short term and 250,000 more planned. That's part of more than $100 million invested into guayule-based rubber, the company says.

"With guayule, we can reduce the environmental impacts that come with overseas sourcing while also realizing a more sustainable agricultural system for parts of this country that are facing persistent and worsening climate conditions, so it’s really something with many benefits for our environment and our economy," said Nizar Trigui, chief technology officer for Bridgestone Americas, in a press release .