As COP30 continues in Belém, Brazil, the climate conference is bringing renewed focus to the Amazon rainforest and the commercial activities that have put it at risk.
Often nicknamed the lungs of the planet, it is the largest and most biodiverse rainforest in the world, and it plays a hugely important role in local, regional and global climate regulation. It has also played a hugely important role as a resource to the fashion industry.
Criticism has been placed on fashion brands in recent years whose leather supply chains have been linked to companies felling the Amazon to make space for pasture, a major contributor to deforestation in the area. Yet, one of leather’s low-impact alternatives also thrives in the Amazon.
Latex, the raw substance which is tapped from the shiringa tree, and is turned into rubber, has been used by societies since ancient times, including by the Omec, Mayan and Aztec people. The Amazon rainforest is the only place on earth where shiringa trees grow natively. The latex is sourced without cutting down the tree, creating a renewable and biodegradable material with numerous uses if managed responsibly.
In apparel, many may still associate the material with fetish wear, but environmentally and socially conscious fashion brands are increasingly turning to rubber to replace leather or fossil fuel-based materials in their collections.
Sneaker brand Veja uses it to make their soles and has increased their buy from the Amazon from just under 70,000kg in 2018 to 709,500kg in 2021. Since 2019, the rubber it sources has been Fair For Life certified, paying five times the market price to the rubber tappers. The aim of this certification is to make indigenous land more commercially viable which will enable them to protect their land from competing commercial interests.
At Copenhagen Fashion Week this August, several brands came together in an event for charity Collective Fashion Justice to showcase their work with Amazonian rubber and promote its use in the industry. Finnish heritage brand Marimekko, Peruvian textile studio Mozhdeh Matin, Hungarian womenswear label AERON, Nordic accessories label ASK Scandinavia, and Brazilian designer Serena Coelho exhibited coats, bags, jackets and other garments at the event.
Many fashion designers from the Amazon are embracing it in their work as a political message of protecting the rainforest and celebrating indigenous culture too. Brazilian label Normando draws inspiration from the founders’ experiences growing up in Belém do Pará and uses sustainable materials sourced from the Amazon, including latex, to replace leather.
This isn’t the first time in history that latex has been at the centre of political tension. European colonisers had discovered the native people making rubber and begun to bring it back to make raincoats, garters, shoes and life jackets in the 19th century. In 1839, an American entrepreneur developed a technique for vulcanizing rubber which made the material stronger and more durable under warm conditions. This made it suitable for bicycle and car tires which became increasingly popular as the century went on and led to the Amazon rubber boom.
Westerners dubbed latex the “white gold of the Amazon” and began extracting it at dramatic rates. Indigenous people were used as slaves to harvest the latex and mass migration from industrialists resulted in other crimes and genocide against the locals.
To keep up with demand, a British colonialist smuggled seeds from the plant out of South America and planted them in other British colonies including Sri Lanka and Singapore. Rubber can still be sourced from Asia today as a result.
The growth of plantations in other parts of the world meant the price of rubber began to fall from 1900 onwards and many of the immigrants began to retreat from South America bringing the rubber boom to an end but leaving irreparable damage in their wake.
Designers and brands working with rubber today are doing so in an effort to bring sustainable solutions in partnership with indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest and create an economy that supports those communities to safeguard their land.
However, as rubber regains its popularity in a trend-driven industry, it is crucial to remember its dark history and vow to support rubber growing communities in a sustainable, regenerative and respectful partnership.
