A new book takes a deep dive into rubber’s living legacy
Summary
Biologist Vidya Rajan decodes the science and history behind rubber, a substance that forms the basis of modern life
In the 1770s, Vidya Rajan writes in her book Rubber: The Social and Natural History of an Indispensable Substance, an English engineer called Edward Nairne was believed to have used a piece of rubber to erase pencil marks for the first time. Most likely, he didn’t have bits of bread handy, which were then used for this purpose.
It proved to be a happy accident, making Nairne a rich man. In the nascent days of his discovery, he sold the first erasers for as much as 3 shillings a piece, equivalent to the income of a daily-wage labourer of his time. Some 250 years later, rubber continues to serve millions around the world, from artists and architects to writers and schoolkids.
Even this benign episode has an undercurrent of avarice that has defined rubber trade through the centuries. Starting with the Mesoamericans, from whom Spanish colonialists stole this precious substance, to the atrocities carried out in plantations in the Congo under King Leopold, the history of rubber is fraught with injustices.
A trained biologist, Rajan recounts the story of the evolution of latex (from which rubber is made), demystifying the science behind its remarkable versatility, used to make erasers as well as sturdy waterproofing material. Rubber not only made and unmade empires, but will also have a huge impact on the future of the planet.
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Edited excerpts from an interview.
Is rubber the bloodiest cultivated crop, given its colonial legacy?
Any death from exploitation is deplorable. It is not only colonial interests, but also corporate entities, militarised groups and individuals that practice exploitation, for example in mining for ‘blood’ diamonds or coltan for electronics.
Rubber certainly has a terribly bloody and exploitative history. Among crops, cotton, sugar, banana and tobacco are some which have inflicted enormous pain on humans. Many of the abuses remain undocumented because of remote locations, inadequate record keeping or slow communications. Some have been products of colonisation. But others are due to exploitation for profit despite shared ethnicity. The profit motive is usually extractive when natural resources are involved.
How do you read Britain’s interest in exposing atrocities in the Congo rubber plantations, when they were guilty of horrific imperialistic ambitions in other parts of the world?
The eagerness of powerful perpetrators to keep atrocities hidden required truth-telling by vulnerable victims to provide personal statements, and brave witnesses to provide documentation such as photographs. When administrations persuade themselves that they, on balance, provide benefits, they show willingness to overlook injustice to some of the population. This is still happening. And though instant communications and social media may transmit information quickly, a distracted and overwhelmed public often does not react to demand justice. It is public outcry that gets results.
Colonial powers, including Britain, persuaded themselves that they were providing benevolent administration, uplifting technology, religious instruction, protecting commercial, educational or medical benefits. Perhaps they turned a blind eye or meted out slaps on the wrist rather than punitive punishment when these atrocities came to light. Regarding the Belgian Congo and Putumayo in the Peruvian Amazon, the truth-tellers went public in Britain, resulting in a public outcry which pressured British politicians to acknowledge and investigate wrongdoing in areas where they had some authority.
Charles Goodyear’s obsession with rubber led to his ruin. What explains his persistence when the substance didn’t have as wide a use as now?
Since Charles Goodyear was familiar with some of the uses which were already commercially lucrative (floatation devices, bags, boots, waterproof clothing, hoses), no doubt he could have dreamed up many more. Others were also in the game, so ideas for the use of rubber were not lacking, although automobiles with rubber tyres were not yet in use. Only decades later the automotive tire industry caused rubber’s value to skyrocket.
So Goodyear’s persistence and monomania were truly remarkable, a product of real fascination. But certainly, it is hard to understand his pawning his children’s textbooks and leaving his family destitute. His obliviousness to his family’s well-being is partly what makes him such an enigmatic and compelling character.
India currently ranks at no. 4 in rubber production, globally. How did we get here?
British ambition in the late 19th century was to have untrammelled access to rubber. It induced them to purloin rubber trees from Brazil and bring them to their environmentally similar tropical rainforest colonies in southeast Asia. After World War II a wave of decolonisation (from British, Dutch and French colonisation) swept through Asia with several rubber producing countries—India in 1947, Indonesia and Vietnam in 1949, Malaysia in 1957—retained their plantations and production structure. 80% of India’s production is from smallholders rather than estates, and Kerala produces 90% of the annual rubber crop.
Kerala set up the cooperative marketing federation (RubberMark), which provides collectivised smallholders price negotiation benefits of large producers. It encourages smallholders to cultivate family plots and to make rubber one of several income streams. India’s national rubber board (set up in 1947) provides research, training, marketing and other functions to support rubber producers in the country.
Scientifically, what gives natural rubber its unique quality?
Rubber is a biopolymer made of isoprene units. Tens of thousands of isoprene units are joined together with cis-linkage to make the enormously long rubber molecule. Thousands of these long molecules intertwine, typically sliding around each other like cooked and oiled spaghetti. Chemical modifications, such as crosslinking between strands, can modulate rebound following stretching, termed elasticity, and ability to bend without breaking, termed flexibility. Rubber shows another unique property, of contracting when heated, which is extremely useful in belts for rotating motors.
The unique quality of natural rubber is its amenability to incorporating chemical additives or treatment to produce materials as diverse as sturdy but elastic airplane tyres to sustain the weight of an airplane during landing, thin but resilient airbags which expand explosively without bursting, and heat-resistant hard rubber for flooring, and belts for machinery. No synthetic rubber polymer (as yet produced) matches natural rubber’s properties.
What does the future of rubber look like in terms of its environmental impact and sustainable use?
Synthetic rubber plugs the deficit for some uses but, given that natural rubber is an indispensable substance for several uses (such as airplane tyres) the demand is ever-increasing. Para rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis) need to be tapped early in the morning, and the latex collected in the day for coagulation, so access to the trees requires clear and unimpeded paths. There are negative impacts of increasing production in tropical areas, because they require bulldozing wilderness, with collateral damage to complex ecosystems.
However, rubber from the roots of the humble Russian dandelion, Taraxacum kok-saghyz, produces rubber of equivalent quality to Para rubber. Although it takes large quantities of dandelion roots, these plants have other benefits: they grow in temperate regions rather than biodiversity-rich tropical rainforests, support pollinators, produce value-added products such as inulin, fatty acids, phenolic compounds, caftaric and chicoric acids, and sesquiterpenoids. The remnants can be used as feedstock or fertiliser.
Regarding sustainability, a major benefit will be recycling or reusing rubber products. Some waste rubber is burned for energy, but toxic volatiles must be scrubbed. The bacterium Gordonia polyisoprenivorens, and some less-well characterised bacterial and fungal species break down tyre rubber and possibly other rubber materials, but industrial processes must be optimised and residual products detoxified. For instance, an antioxidant used in tyres, 6PDD, is toxic to salmon, and must be sequestered from entering water bodies.
Extra-terrestrial occupation by humans will also require rubber. We need to plan for a surge in demand, and for managing rubber waste on other planets.
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