Since Caffelatex is synthetic, is it more detrimental to the environment than Stans no tube?
The fact Stans uses ‘natural latex’ doesn’t mean there are no synthetic elements in its formula. On the other hand, synthetic doesn’t always mean ‘bad’ for the environment, as all the recyclable plastics demonstrate: basically, no toxic or environmentally-dangerous chemicals are used to make Caffelatex. You could argue that the Caffelatex environmental impact is even lower than Stan’s, because you don’t run the risk of throwing away a tire (an high environmental cost!) because it has been eroded by ammonia, something that might happen with Stan’s. As far as chemicals are concerned, the most dangerous one used inside Caffelatex is 12 % of monoethyleneglycol (as anti-freeze, but I suspect Stan’s also uses something like this). From Wikipedia: “The major danger from ethylene glycol is ingestion, as it is somewhat toxic with LD50 = 1.4 g/kg for humans”. To put this in perspective, Aspirin has an LD50 = 0.2g/kg, which is 7 times more dangerous than ethylene glycol in Caffelatex! Nevertheles
