Rubber Trees
From Floor Coverings
Contents |
Rubber Tree Types
Where does rubber come from?
There are rubber trees for your home that don't look anything like your rubber-producing trees grown in jungle habitats. Rubber trees on plantations are kept at a reasonable height so that they can be harvested and controlled easily. Rubber sap, as it were, is still just rubber sap and the thick white liquid can be seen if you snap off a leaf of that rubber plant you have in the corner of your home. You could be walking around right now with rubber soled shoes on your feet, striding over your rubber floor mat or across the rubber flooring of your dance studio or athletic court. If you have taken your child to a playground, no doubt the ground around swing sets and other equipment is composed partially or wholly of rubber. Rubber is often used as a safety flooring in restaurants and labs. It provides traction on a wet or greasy surface. And who hasn't driven their car, which uses rubber tires? All of these and thousands of more uses for rubber, come from a simple rubber tree.
What flooring uses are there for rubber?
Think of the thousands of items made from rubber, and the uses for rubber. The possibilities are almost endless. Besides the aforementioned use for flooring of many types -- a child's toy can be made from rubber, things can be cushioned by threading through a rubber grommet, rubber lips can be placed where two sections of flooring meet at a ninety degree angle, and even computer mouse pads are usually made from rubber. Rubber trees are an incredibly useful and fast growing plant. Rubber is such a cushioning product that humans will no doubt be thinking up ways to use it far into the future. Rubber can be made stronger by vulcanization -- a heat process named after either: 1) An alien's home planet, or 2) The Roman god of mythology, or 3) A person who studies volcanoes. Either way, Vulcan means heat.
How Is Rubber Harvested?
Pretty much like maple syrup is harvested. This is a huge and popular and renewable and eco-friendly, and useful product. Rubber is grown in a warm or tropical environment. Rubber trees are grown like any other plantation trees, so that they can be accessed by people and harvested for their product, whatever it happens to be. After processing, there are infinite ways for rubber to be stored until used to make something -- sheets, cable, tubing, big raw lumps -- whatever way that keeps it ready for use in factories and plants across the globe. Once refined, rubber can be re-melted into any shape that you choose. Rubber is used in linoleum and lends durability and a bounce to that enduring floor covering. Just think of the many things that you use throughout the day, and there will be many that contain rubber.
