Glass Baby Bottles – Newborn/Slow Flow Natural Rubber/Latex Nipples – 8 oz

The term natural rubber or caoutchouc (from Indian, meaning tears of weeping tree) refers to a coagulated or precipitated product obtained from latex of rubber trees – latex is natural clogging substance during healing of wounds caused by mechanical injury of these plants and it serves mainly as defense against herbivorous insects.

Natural rubber is often vulcanized – a process by which the rubber is heated and some substances (sulfur, peroxide or bisphenol) added to improve resistance and elasticity and to prevent it from perishing.

Although natural rubber is biodegradable, vulcanized rubber (commonly present in our shoes) and rubber from tires are non-biodegradable.

Fair Rubber
Low prices drive natural rubber producers into poverty and serious violations of working rights are common. This is the harsh reality revealed in a the study conducted by Aidenvironment . The comprehensive review of literature reveals numerous cases of inadequate safety standards, inappropriate use of toxic chemicals, discrimination and structurally long working hours and child labour. It points to the need for more responsible sourcing practices by the rubber industry with particular attention to fair trading conditions.

Wild Rubber
Over half the rubber we use is synthetic. Some 11 million tons is natural rubber, mainly grown in large plantations in Asia. Less than 1% comes from rubber trees growing wild in the Amazon where rubber originated.
But wild rubber could be making a comeback – and that’s good news for the Amazon. Sustainably harvesting wild rubber from the rainforest is improving the livelihoods of local people – and providing an economic incentive to keep the forest standing.

Synthetic Rubber
Synthetic rubber (commonly named “rubber”) is not a sustainable material as it is made from petroleum.

Borosilicate glass is a type of glass with silica and boron trioxide as the main glass-forming constituents. Borosilicate glasses resistant to thermal shock, more so than any other common glass.

Borosilicate glass has a wide variety of uses ranging from cookware to lab equipment, as well as a component of high-quality products such as implantable medical devices and devices used in space exploration.

Borosilicate glass is not recyclable as it is a very different from common glass: it could be recycled into new products made of borosilicate glass but there is not enough borosilicate glass being consumed and disposed of to make it worthwhile to design a process to collect, transport, clean, and re-introduce borosilicate glass cullet into the new manufacturing stream, but most borosilicate glass products are designed for a long life of re-use, this should not be much of an issue.