Angående däck: var de är tillverkade är en sak, men var råvaran kommer ifrån och hur den inhandlas är nog minst lika kritiskt att granska. Lyssnade på Pinkbikes podcast med Schwalbe om hur de jobbar med inköp av "Fair trade"-gummi, länk nedan och ett urklipp av det mest intressanta här (edit: lade till några rader till från intervjun):
We get nerdy about tire development, weight, price, manufacturing, sustainability, and how to actually pronounce Schwalbe.
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Felix: Rubber is a wonderful natural raw material found in a rubber tree,
Hevea brasiliensis. And you have this tree growing in the equator regions. We source our natural rubber predominantly from Indonesia, where we also manufacture all of our (tire) compounds. So we have a very short supply chain on that side.
You basically have small holders, just like you have with coffee, tea, or cocoa. And these people have small rubber plantations. They're usually not monocultures like palm oil, they are so-called jungle plantations, at least in our case. So you have a very high level of biodiversity, low impact on the environment.
This rubber from the trees is then processed in a processing plant. And this is what we get to our tire factory where we then use it to create compounds. Talking about tire tech, I'm sure you know what all goes in there—fillers, chemicals, carbon black, or in the future recovered carbon black, to make different compounds.
The compounding side is really what decides whether a tire is good or bad.
Henry:
Am I right in saying that Schwalbe uses a fair trade agreement with some of its suppliers?
Felix:
Yeah, so we are working with an NGO called Fair Rubber. Essentially, it's the fair trade organization for natural rubber. And together with them, we found a supplier in Java, around 100 kilometers from our factory. We set up a system for the farmers, the smallholders. Basically they are attached to a cooperative, and for every kilogram of natural rubber that we buy off every individual smallholder, we pay an additional 50 cents. This equates to roughly an additional one third of their monthly salary. So it does have a real impact on these people, on their communities.
I was lucky to visit last September. I was able to visit a school that has been completely renovated, so it has a real positive influence on these communities. We started with around 230, 250 smallholders in 2020, and we now have just over 2,500. So it's a system that we've been able to scale up.
We're hoping to increase the capacities in the future, definitely. And since July this year, the Tacky Chan, amongst other mountain bike tires, also uses Fair Rubber.
Henry:
This sounds like a really healthy initiative for something like fair trade. Did the covid bike boom and materials shortages actually make a lasting improvement by giving the smallholders more power?
Felix:
No, let's not sugarcoat this. These people usually live below the poverty line and they are often exploited. The bicycle industry, even though we are growing and the future outlook is very positive, we are only a very small portion. So that is why we find it really important to find some sort of way to support these people whilst also giving them ownership over what they do.
Brian:
Aside from the social reasons and moral reasons to do something like this, does it also impact the quality of the rubber? Are we going to see mountain bike hipsters start looking for single origin, shade grown at a specific altitude, rubber on their tires?
Felix:
As a coffee geek, I would love that, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. No, it doesn't affect the quality of the product, but it affects the livelihood of these people.
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