Could Eco-Friendly Condoms Save the Planet?

Can a rubber sack you ejaculate into and throw away save the planet? Jeffrey Hollender and his daughter Meika think so. Jeffery sits on the board at Green​peace, the activist group that occasionally pops up in the news for harassing arctic oil drillers on the high seas. He was also the brains behind Sev​enth Generation, a line of green cleaning products that you can find in almost any supermarket these days.

For his latest endeavor Jeffery, together with his 26-year-old spawn, have set their eyes on the world of prophylactics, with Sustain brand condoms. It took about two years to develop the product, and they just started selling them online earlier this year with a marketing campaign aimed more at women than men--10 percent of the proceeds go toward women's reproduc​tive health care.

Although the seven-person company created some internet b​uzz with their sex-positive ads, their main goal with these nifty jimmy hats is to bring healthy, sustainable, and ethical production methods to condom manufacturing and, ultimately, to the rubber industry as a whole.

Condoms are a vital tool when it comes to warding off pregnancy and infectious diseases like AIDS. Unfortunately, you're also rubbing your genitalia in some less than romantic substances like silicate dusting powders and paraben preservatives.

A stu​​dy published this September from the Reproductive Health Technologies Project and the Center for Environmental Health found carcinogenic nitrosamines in 16 out of the 23 condoms it tested. As the study notes, both the World Health Organization and the UN Population Fund have called for minimising the presence of nitrosamines in condoms over the potential for those chemicals to cause cancer.

The US Food and Drug Administration, which regulates condoms in the United States, has not raised alarms over nitrosamine in condoms and levels of the substance were found in the study to be well below a toxic dose. But the authors of the study note that "because we face regular exposure to nitrosamines from other products", like cigarettes, pacifiers, and even hot dogs, "anything that adds to our cumulative nitrosamine exposure raises health concerns."

Among the two most popular brands, trace levels of the nitrosamine N-nitrosobutylamine were found in Durex Avanti Bare condoms but not in Durex Extra Sensitive-Extra Lubricated. Nine out of ten Trojan condoms tested contained nitrosamines (the exception being the Trojan Sensitivity Bareskin).

The  Sustai​n brand condoms Jeffery and Meika have developed are nontoxic, as the study showed, so you won't have to worry about an early death when you are trying to avoid creating new life. Instead, Jeffery and Meika argue that you can also take solace in the fact that their condoms are made with far more ethical practices than their competitors.

"Obviously, no condom anywhere on Earth is reusable or biodegradable," Jeff told me. "But what we've tried to do is address the biggest impacts from a sustainability perspective and reinvent the supply chain."

Alth​ough approximately 60 to​ 70 ​percent of all natural rubber cultivation goes toward tires, and surgical gloves use 50 times more latex than condoms, prophylactics do rely on large-scale rubber and latex production that is negatively impacting planet Earth. Large scale rubber production can contribute to the erosion of topsoil, and it inhibits the natural biochemical cycle of carbon. If the timber used in rubber production were left in the soil, it would absorb carbon dioxide and help mitigate against the effects of the heat-trapping gas that fuels global warming. Instead, it's often sold off as lumber or, even worse, burned on the spot, adding to the greenhouse gas effect. To keep underbrush from growing, rubber plantations also use chemical herbicides such as pa​r​aquat. These herbicides can linger in the soil and migrate into rivers and watersheds.

Southeast Asia is where 70 percent of the global rubber supply comes from, and it's not hard to find evidence of the negative impacts of rubber production. In Cambodia, for example, 1.2 million hectares were given over for commercial rubber cultivation in 2011, according to the nonprofit Forest Tre​nds, which tracks deforestation worldwide. In Thailand, rubber and palm oil plantations have reduced biodiversity by 60 pe​rcent. And in China's Yunnan Province, "monoculture rubber plantations have replaced exceptionally biodiverse forests and contributed to a host of emerging environmental problems," w​rites Associated Press correspondent Mike Ives.

Researchers at the University of Amsterdam w​ho​ traced the typical production cycle of cond​oms in the 90s noted that these agricultural practices have "seriously endangered" drinking water where they have taken place "not to speak of the consequences for the ecosystem and the stench." (Processing latex is an extremely pungent undertaking that involves heavy amounts of ammonia).

Rubber plantation workers typically don't have it so swell either. According to a 2013 review fr​om the US Department of Labor, rubber producers in Cambodia, Liberia, Indonesia, and the Philippines utilised child labor. Rubber from Burma contained both child labor and forced labor.

I reached out to Havas Worldwide, makers of Durex, and to Church and Dwight Co., manufacturers of Trojans - the world's two largest condom brands--to find out where their latex comes from and how it is produced. Church and Dwight did not respond to my inquiries. My questions for Durex were passed from one executive to another. Finally, I was informed that since my queries were "highly technical" they did not have answers readily available.

Martin Kunz, of the Fair Rubber ​Association, wasn't surprised. "Latex is not like wine," Kunz told me. "It's a commodity. It doesn't matter if it is from Malaysia or Cambodia. When you buy it, you call a broker and you tell him, 'I need 20 tons of this stuff.' It doesn't matter to large companies where it comes from."

Jeffery and Meika want to reverse this trend through sustainable alternatives.

"I'm only 26 years old," Meika told me. "But I have spent a portion of my career working for corporations, especially companies that make consumer-packaged goods. My experience in big, traditional companies is what led me to want to be an entrepreneur and start a new model."

That new model requires intimate involvement in the supply chain on their part and the part of the advocacy groups they work with. "In our wildest fantasies, fair trade rubber will become as popular as fair trade coffee," reads a note on the company's websit​e.

"Our plantation is the only plantation that makes latex for condoms that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council," Jeffery told me. "That covers everything from pesticide use to protecting the biodiversity of species." (They're also vegan certifie​d, meaning they don't contain animal byproducts - though it's probably not a good idea to eat them.)

The condoms are produced at a nearby factory that is unionised, powered by solar panels, and has won awards for water conservation. Regular sex education classes are conducted among the workforce and their families in the surrounding villages, which brings us to another benefit the condoms serve according the father-daughter duo.

"When you think about things like overpopulation, it is one of the largest contributors to climate change," said Meika. "We feel that by addressing overpopulation and poverty, we are counterbalancing the impact of a condom in a landfill."

Population's role in the climate crisis remains controversial, however.

"The biggest ecological problems we have are in countries with declining birth rates," Ian Angus, author of Too Many Peo​ple? and a longtime critic of Malthusian environmentalism and consumer-based approaches to addressing climate change, explained to me.

When you live in a poorer country, you also have a much smaller carbon footprint. Emissions per capita in the North America, the world's wealthiest continent, are more than 13​ times that of Africa, the poorest. Even within developed nations, there is a direct corollary between wealth and carbon output.

According to a 2013 st​udy published in the Environmental Science & Policy journal, the wealthiest 10 percent of the population accounts for 20 percent of carbon emissions associated with transportation, a major source of pollution. And there lies the crux of the matter. If more and more people in the Global South improve their quality of life and tread on this Earth leaving the same carbon footprint as your average American, we're doomed from a climate perspective.

"Almost anything you do that doesn't take on the root causes of climate change is capable of backfiring," Ian told me. So even though Sustain's green condoms are a nice start, they're certainly not a viable solution for turning back the tide on our environmental problems. Maybe if Sustain's founders used their big brains for something more than protecting our little brains--like helping end our reliance on fossil fuels - we'd really see an impact. However, Ian suggests you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for solutions like that to come from the business sector because "they're just not profitable".

Follow Peter Rugh on Twi​t​ter.