One of our jobs is educating young architects and interior designers about where rubber comes from. Dalsouple uses good quality rubber from Malaysia to produce its rubber flooring.

We quite often hear, "I didn't know there was a rubber tree. I thought rubber was synthetic!"

Synthetic rubber is developed in a laboratory and made from the by-product of crude oil.

Natural rubber, or latex is tapped from the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis. The trees are usually in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam or Cambodia.

The latex is collected in little cups. The worker cuts little slices in the bark of the tree. As the tree grows, the tree is marked with these slices. The rubber tree can grow to be 30 years old, then it can be cut down to be used as timber. Many rubber trees are now being cut down and replaced with Palm Oil. 

Trees are rarely tapped more often than once every two days.

Each tree a sharp knife is used to shave off the thinnest possible layer from the intact section of bark. The cut must be neither too deep, nor too thick.  This starts the latex flowing, and the tapper leaves leaves a little cup underneath the cut.

Rubber producing plants grow best within 10 degrees of the Equator, where the climate is hot and moist, and the soil is deep and rich. For this reason, the area of about 700 miles on each side of the Equator is known as the "Rubber Belt."

Rubber trees sequester CO2 from the atmosphere so they are helping reduce carbon rather than adding to our problems with carbon emissions.

photo of a piece of raw rubber sheet before finishing.

Synthetic latex is a man-made compound of styrene and butadiene. It’s less expensive than natural latex and most rubber flooring on the market around the world today is SBR, synthetic rubber.

A piece of SBR, synthetic rubber which is opaque, a bit sticky, and not as flexible.