Finally!

See that there pile of tires? That's how I've ended up. Worn out, thrown away. But, I know I can continue being helpful! Natural rubber, even after all the treatment and use/abuse, is still usable. Tires can be burned as fuel for (certain) machines to take pressure off of power ills for big companies. Reclaiming old rubber is roughly twice as efficient as making new rubber.

And then...

Here is where some of the newly-made rubber gets sent. This is what's called a vulcaniser. It vulcanises the rubber (me included) into a much more durable material. This specifically is a pressure vulcaniser, that introduces high pressure and heat. Rubber, treated and untreated, is very useful, but now that I've been vulcanised, I'm off to be turned into a tire. From there, I'm going on a hauling truck and delivering more material across the land to fuel production by, ironically, burning fuel

In the beginning...

So, I begin my life as natural rubber coming out of a spigot lodged inside a rubber tree. Actually, not a lot of people realize natural rubber comes from trees. Where they thought I came from, I don't know. But, after my relatives and I are collected from our respective trees, we're sent off to the processing plant where we get treated with acid (ow!), mixed with other additives such as carbon black (anti-abrasive) or zinc oxide (for pigments) and are rolled into thin sheets of rubber. The picture above is the tree I came from. Hi, mom!