I did a blog post at the end of last March 2011, where I
described some of the obstacles facing the tire industry and mentioned the
rising costs of rubber. In the post last
year I mentioned Germany and Continental Tire were experimenting with rubber
from dandelions to possibly replace the rubber from rubber tree plantations. The benefit from Dandelions is they can be
grown all over the place opening up the possibility of rubber farms popping up
everywhere. Dandelions don’t take five
years from planting to produce rubber like the rubber trees do.
Tires are made from natural rubber and synthetic
rubber. The natural rubber comes from
very limited areas of the planet where the climate is sufficient to allow
rubber trees to grow, effectively creating a monopoly of sorts on natural
rubber. Most of the world’s natural
rubber supply comes from Ceylon ( Sri Lanka ), Indonesia, Singapore, and
British Malaya. There has been stories about
Mega speculators stock piling natural rubber to make the price sky-rocket on
the world market.
Whatever the real
culprit is it has forced those who rely on natural rubber to find alternative
means of supply.
Whether the Rubber industry has been hit with bad production
or the hoarding of natural rubber by speculators in order to drive the price of
natural rubber up in the world market it has definitely impacted the price of
tires dramatically around the world.
Yesterday a story released in Tire Industry News Sources
tells about how Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations is working with PENRA
(Program for Excellence in Natural Rubber Alternatives) based out of Ohio State
Universities Agricultural Research and Development Center, working with Russian
Dandelions as a viable source for natural rubber.
That’s right the scourge of lawns worldwide, at least one
variety of it, may create an industry to provide rubber for the use in rubber
products the world over, namely tires.
If the massive increase in prices was caused by market speculators and
industries turn to alternative markets such as this in the future it may
destroy the viable market of rubber from existing rubber tree plantations
throughout the world.
Too bad we aren’t working on alternatives for gasoline to
run our cars and free us from getting raped at the pump by the oil
companies. You hear about how this
causes the price of gasoline to go up and that causes the price of oil to rise,
and yet you see the posted earnings of the oil companies and it doesn’t take a
rocket scientist to figure out what is really going on.
If I could grow dandelions or some other plant and produce
gasoline from it I would plow under the grass in my yard tomorrow! As it is fields of dandelions may soon be popping
up all over for the production of the natural rubber to be harvested from these
weeds!
Remember if you have not read my book yet, it will be on
sale for 75% off over Memorial Day Weekend at Amazon Dot Com. Just click this link “Whisper.”
Just in time to enjoy while relaxing over Memorial Day
Weekend, a time travel adventure aboard a navy ship. Join Commander Wiley Randolph and crew on a
harrowing adventure through history.
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