Gutta-Percha: A Case of Resource Depletion and International Rivalry

Gutta-percha, the latex of the Palaquium tree, is a natural plastic with good dielectric properties, once used to insulate submarine telegraph cables. The rapid expansion of telegraphy after 1850 led to the almost total destruction of the wild trees by natives of Malaya, Sumatra, and Borneo. By the turn of the century, the depletion of this essential but slowly renewable resource caused much concern in European and American business circles. Two sciences were brought to bear on this problem. Botanists first searched for additional wild trees, then opened plantations for future production. Meanwhile, chemists sought to substitute the latex of other trees such as natural rubber and balata. In 1933, Imperial Chemical Industries created the synthetic dielectric polyethylene. The cycle from plunder to botanical then to chemical substitutes is typical of the use of tropical products by the industrialized countries and seldom benefits the populations or the environments of the tropics. Of all the natural substances used by man, gutta-percha is surely among the least well known today, except to three groups of connoisseurs: dentists, who use it to fill cavities; golfers, who hit it with a stick; and historians, to whom it is the stuff with which our ancestors made ashtrays, lamp stands, and submarine cables.* None of them, however, has felt the need to write or give speeches about it in the past 50 years.