Rubber is used in a ton of products in the developed and developing worlds. It forms door and window seals, it makes gaskets used in power plants, the soles of shoes, and insulates tools for working with electricity. It’s a large part of our daily lives, whether we realize that or not. Still, there is one use for rubber that almost everyone can easily think of – tires. In America, most families have at least one vehicle, likely two. That means every family has at least eight tires (ten if you include the spares) sitting in their driveway every day. The number can actually be quite a bit more than that when you add in the odd three-car household, snow tires and a utility trailer.
All of those tires come from somewhere and for the most part, that somewhere is the Para rubber tree that grows in Southeast Asia. It’s where a lot of tire companies get the raw material to make their tires. I’ll bet you never thought of Goodyear as a farming company, yet that is a large part of what they and others do. As one might expect, some of the very rainforests those rubber trees grow in are struggling due to being cleared for cattle or due to disease. This is making the tire companies and others that make use of those trees a little concerned about the future of the rubber supply chain.
To that end, Bridgestone has started making extensive use of data to improve its farming operations. They are collecting data and looking for ways to determine which clones of which trees are best suited to which kinds of environments in order to maximize yields. They’ve actually worked their data to come up with a thirty-year plan for the most efficient planting. Once they get the kinks worked out, they plan on offering it to other farms as well.
While it is great that Bridgestone is working on ways to get the most product out of the least amount of land, wouldn’t it be great to come up with new methods of transportation that could minimize the need for so much rubber? Obviously, the cities are looking to improve their public transportation systems. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that fewer cars on the roads of LA and New York would make for a more pleasant environment there.
However, another phenomenon has cropped up or rather accelerated in the last year. That is people moving out of the cities. Whether they are leaving because of taxes, unrest, or COVID, people over the last year have been moving from the cities to the suburbs and people from the suburbs into more rural areas. Yet, their jobs are often far away and even in the digital age, people still have to commute occasionally, or they desire to visit friends, or their favorite restaurants. How to deal with this? Currently, the only thing resembling a mass transit system on this scale is the interstate and more cars on those roads clearly does nothing to reduce the need for rubber.
One of the most promising proposals is the Hyperloop. Initially conceived of as a pair of underground tubes between San Francisco and LA, it would send passengers in pods at speeds up to 700mph, just a bit below the sound barrier. The travel time between the two cities would be around 35 minutes.
Of course, Musk said at the outset that he didn’t plan on developing the Hyperloop himself, leaving it to others to pick up the torch. Fortunately, Richard Branson’s Virgin has done so and has already run successful tests. If this technology can be completed and applied throughout the country, it could revolutionize modern transportation and make it much easier and cheaper to move around the country. That would be a great thing for reducing emissions as well as the need for rubber.
What’s your data worth?
