Correct, it’s all been synthetic for a long, long time. And for what that’s worth, even if there were enough sources of natural latex in the world to support the global tire industry, we’d still have problems. In both cases, polymers are stabilized with sulfur in a process called vulcanization. I’m mostly sure that’s why tires don’t decompose under natural conditions.
So, there is plastic in our rubber tires? Interesting. Can we call it plas-rubber then and sound all futuristic at least?!
I don’t think we’ve used tree rubber in our car rubbers in a long time
Correct, it’s all been synthetic for a long, long time. And for what that’s worth, even if there were enough sources of natural latex in the world to support the global tire industry, we’d still have problems. In both cases, polymers are stabilized with sulfur in a process called vulcanization. I’m mostly sure that’s why tires don’t decompose under natural conditions.
People are working on it though: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11041115/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_rubber