alt Hacker NewsFun facts, the subsea telegraph network cables coating were made from Gutta Percha [1].
Unlike normal rubber, it is a type of thermoplastic and it's a popular organic plastic before the petroleum based modern plastic become pervasive [2].
[1] The legacy of undersea cables:
https://blog.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/the-legacy-of-underse...
[2] Gutta-percha:
They also got a tiny fraction of the rubber from cutting a whole tree down due to not finding a method to get all the rubber, and so cut almost all of the trees down