[Kim Byungmin's Science Village] Humanity's Obsession with Rubber: A Blessing and a Curse

Essential but
Unjust Sacrifices in Natural Rubber Origins
Struggle Over the Amazon
Exploitation of Indigenous Labor by UK, France, USA, Belgium
A History of Great Sacrifice

Byungmin Kim, Adjunct Professor at Hallym University Nano Convergence School

Why is humanity obsessed with rubber?

In an old house full of things needing repair, the faucet is acting up. Water is leaking from the faucet connected to the washing machine. Hardware stores, once common in every neighborhood, are now hard to find. It will take several days for the rubber packing ordered online to arrive, and seeing the pile of laundry makes me anxious. A small, insignificant rubber ring has disrupted daily life. This makes me wonder, "What if there were no rubber?" Some might say rubber is no big deal, but a world without rubber would face unimaginable disaster.

Throughout human history with materials, humanity has received countless blessings beyond measure. However, in the process of acquiring materials, there have been many unjust sacrifices due to ignorance, and humanity’s evil nature has sometimes been revealed in the excesses materials provide. Yet, because the blessings are greater, humanity’s foolishness and mistakes are not easily visible. Perhaps humanity still uses materials with shameful familiarity. Rubber is one such material.

In the early 20th century, two major wars devastated Europe and many other places, plunging the world into depression. Especially in the second war that began in 1939, destruction was compounded by atrocities. Germany’s extreme arrogance, prejudice, and greed led to the operation of extermination camps where Jews were massacred. Yet, even in the hell known as genocide, rubber was present. At that time, Germany had three synthetic rubber factories, but at the start of the second war, in 1941, Germany built a fourth chemical plant?the largest in Eastern Europe?at Auschwitz. A concentration camp was established there to supply labor. Although camps existed before, they were places of slaughter and extermination, not labor. Auschwitz, however, was intended to exploit cheap Jewish slave labor. Working conditions were harsh, and weak prisoners with low productivity were constantly replaced. The so-called “spent” prisoners were sent to the gas chambers. Of the approximately 2.7 million Jews killed during the war, about 1.1 million perished at Auschwitz. Behind the annihilation was the goal of operating the largest chemical plant in Europe at the time, producing synthetic rubber. Why was Germany so obsessed with synthetic rubber?

To understand the reason, we must turn the clock forward about half a century. Humanity unlocked nature’s secret of breaking carbon bonds in fossil fuels with oxygen to obtain enormous energy. This event was the Industrial Revolution. It vertically elevated human civilization relying on iron and fossil fuels. Rubber was an indispensable material here. Although metal and fossil fuels seemed to be the main actors in all mechanical movements centered on heat engines that drove industry, there was another indispensable leading supporting role. Its importance is easy to see?not only the O-ring of a faucet that disrupted ordinary life. Without rubber, airplanes and most means of transportation would not function properly. Machines made of metal and most industrial products would break under shock and vibration. The imperial powers of the time understood the importance of rubber well. The only way to obtain rubber then was to wound rubber trees and collect the milky latex that oozed from the inner bark. This natural rubber latex was poured into molds and dried like steaming rice cakes to make products.

Unsuitable Conditions for Rubber Tree Cultivation in Germany
Development of Synthetic Rubber
Factory Built at Auschwitz
Concentration Camp Established for Labor Supply
Massacre of Useless Jews
Rethinking 'Squid Game' Amid the Phrase 'Sustainability'

The scientific name of the rubber tree is Hevea brasiliensis. As the name suggests, it originally grew in the Amazon region. Europe and the United States were engaged in an invisible war to secure raw materials critical to their economies?a so-called “Amazon contest.” Britain, France, and Belgium, which had colonized parts of South America, ventured into the jungle. Brazil, the original owner of the land, and the United States also joined this contest. Indigenous peoples suffered from diseases brought by Europeans, but labor exploitation for rubber was another disaster for them. The jungle environment also brought huge sacrifices to the invaders. Raw material supply was difficult, and eventually, in the late 19th century, Britain smuggled rubber tree seeds from Brazil and planted them in the Royal Botanical Gardens. Successfully grown seedlings were sent to British colonies in Southeast Asia. The reason we thought the rubber tree’s homeland was Southeast Asia when traveling there is because most rubber is produced in this region.

However, Germany is absent from the rubber contest. Germany, which first invented the internal combustion engine, needed rubber for tires and packing in the automobile industry, and knew well that rubber was used in many industries including electrical, medical, and chemical fields. Germany’s geographical and climatic conditions were unsuitable for rubber tree cultivation, and unlike other European countries, Germany did not secure colonies and thus could not utilize tropical colonies. Consequently, the German government mobilized many chemists to find a way to produce rubber independently.

In fact, Europe’s discovery of rubber dates back about four centuries before the Amazon contest, to the era of Columbus’s voyages. In 1419, Spain saw the Mayan Indians’ game involving bouncing rubber balls. Since the word “bouncing” did not exist in Europe then, it was natural to be enthusiastic about rubber, which could make money. But rubber was a material of imagination. It hardened like stone or melted like liquid depending on temperature, making it useless, so people lost interest. Four centuries later, humanity discovered how to vulcanize rubber with sulfur, drawing people back to the Amazon. As human and animal labor was replaced by machines, they again became obsessed with rubber to connect the joints.

Germany introduced science to rubber. Germany identified rubber as a polymer called polyisoprene and discovered the vulcanization mechanism that the United States found serendipitously. Ultimately, lacking raw materials, Germany began producing rubber itself. In 1909, Bayer succeeded in processing isoprene to manufacture a rubber-like substance, enabling the establishment of Buna factories. Buna is an abbreviation of butadiene and sodium catalyst. When butadiene molecules are linked long, polybutadiene is formed, which was the synthetic rubber produced at Auschwitz’s chemical plant in exchange for Jewish lives. Today’s plastic manufacturing methods were developed based on this rubber production process. In a way, Germany’s research on synthetic rubber completely changed the world. Rubber became the driving force that, along with petrochemical industries, extracted carbon trapped on Earth and filled the world with plastic.

Despite the advent of synthetic rubber, natural rubber is still harvested from nature’s veins. Synthetic rubber is only an imperfect substitute that cannot match nature’s mastery. Our civilization still depends on the unique properties of natural rubber. The main production area of rubber has shifted to Southeast Asia for a reason. Disease devastated Amazon rubber trees. The rubber trees seen in Southeast Asia today are grafted clones of high-yield varieties from the Amazon. Thus, the survival game of eliminating poor-quality varieties also applies here, and the nearly monoculture rubber trees are vulnerable to leaf blight virus, with only susceptible varieties surviving. Advances in transportation are like threads stitching today’s separated continents back into the ancient Pangaea. Someday, leaf blight will cross geographical boundaries. If this happens, it will be a disaster humanity has never experienced, and recovery will take an unbearably long time.

Recently, we talk about pandemics and climate change and use the phrase “sustainable” too easily. We say that removing a few main causes will realize a sustainable future. But restoring nature’s landscape to “selfish civilization” is not as easy as it sounds. The current deterioration of humanity’s survival environment is filled with numerous factors and causes. Materials are intricately and three-dimensionally intertwined. We are often trapped by the “growth and productivity” implied in the phrase “sustainability,” ignoring or forgetting the arduous journey, destruction, and sacrifice until the material reaches us. And still, unseen, nature is being put into humanity’s survival “Squid Game.” Why do we only want to grow? Can’t we take a break? I wonder if we are unknowingly carrying stones to build another Tower of Babel.

By Byeongmin Kim, Adjunct Professor, Nano Convergence School, Hallym University