First, it is important to make a distinction when looking at the price of rubber. For the most part, rubber costs can be divided into two broad categories: the cost of natural rubber, and the cost of synthetic rubber. These two products are fundamentally different because of the ways in which they are produced. Natural rubber is produced by extracting latex from the Para rubber tree that is found primarily on plantations in South America and Southeast Asia. Synthetic rubber, on the other hand, is a petrochemical, meaning that it is a product that is derived from petroleum, obtained from fossil fuels! The presence of both of these materials, natural and synthetic rubber, is used to determine what the overall rubber supply is, but they are usually analyzed separately. Both of these materials are used to create commercial rubber that has uses in everyday products.