Rubber

I found this article titled, "Expanding Rubber Plantations 'Catastrophic' for endangered Species in Southeast Asia," by Physic.org. The first thing that i found interesting is that rubber comes from a plant I thought it was an element or mineral. The plants are also not dark as a traditional rubber product looks like. The research was done by University of East Anglia and it estimates that 8.5 million of hectares will be needed by 2024 to keep up with the demand. People this means that more things will be made out of rubber. Hectares are a metric way of measuring land like acres, but in a metric system hectares is the way to measure. If rubber planters thing that they can just expand their plantations its going to be difficult because planting rubber causes negative effects on the natural environment. Rubber plants are almost similar to the oil palm, which apparently is bad as the article says. But, big companies like Goodyear and Michelin want the rubber to produce tires for cars and airplanes. In order to plant these rubber plants trees need to be cut down meaning that companies are just destroying Southeast Asia's natural resources.