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World Hacks: A surprising new afterlife for chewing gum
British designer Anna Bullus is on a mission to recycle chewing gum into useful objects, cleaning up our streets in the process.
More than £14bn is spent on chewing gum around the world each year, but a lot of that gum will end up stuck to the ground. Gum is the second most common type of street litter after cigarette materials. In the UK, councils spend around £50m each year cleaning up the mess. But Anna had an idea. What if the sticky stuff could actually be recycled and turned into useful objects?
[...] But how do you persuade people to donate their gum - instead of carelessly tossing it on to the street? As part of her strategy, Anna created bright pink, bubble-shaped bins specially for disposing of gum called Gumdrop, which can be hung at head-height. These bins are themselves made of recycled chewing gum. A message next to the bins explains that any gum collected will be recycled into new objects. [...] The University of Winchester was one of the first places to sign up to use the bins. Around 8,000 people live and work on its campus and the authorities wanted to keep it clean of gum litter. [...] Eighteen months later, the university noticed a drop in gum litter and is expanding the scheme.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Friday March 09 2018, @11:30AM (8 children)
I applaud the potential environmental benefits but I wouldn't ever take a sip from one of those cups! Maybe use them in tire manufacture or something, fine. If I had my way, anyone caught spitting gum onto the sidewalk would be forced to clean it up. With their teeth. Unfortunately, increased surveillance would be needed for this to work, which I oppose, so probably best to just ban the gum altogether.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @12:27PM (3 children)
> so probably best to just ban the gum altogether.
Any chance you are having a "king for the day" fantasy?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday March 09 2018, @12:41PM (2 children)
Not really. Everyone should form their own opinions about desired policy. Thinking about this stuff is important if you are to be a functional member of a healthy democracy. Not that democracy is especially healthy right now.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday March 09 2018, @12:45PM (1 child)
To be clear, I don't mean democracy as a philosophy is unhealthy. I mean many attempts at it in the world today are unhealthy.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Friday March 09 2018, @01:01PM
President Duterte is doing terrific things in the Philippines. He gave me a beautiful shirt, they call it a barong, exactly like his. Except mine is bigger. He says we're made from the same cloth. What an honor! We wore our matching barongs to the ASEAN Summit and turned a lot of heads!!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @12:39PM
Chewing gum is illegal in Singapore for this very reason.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday March 09 2018, @03:14PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Friday March 09 2018, @06:56PM (1 child)
I would argue that it should be taxed according to cost just like any other pollution/external cost should be.
Banning would just open grey/black markets.
It costs 50M$ annually to clean up ?
Then there should be a 50M$ + 10% tax added to the annual sales of .
But of course just as with banning and many other solutions there are unintended consequences.
Once possible unintended consequence: people might feel obligation to litter with tax applied. (mitigation- allow companies to claim discounts/rebates if able to show collected used gum.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday March 09 2018, @08:13PM
Not really because I highly doubt the clean up is effective. There are too many millions of people constantly spitting out new gum so in town and city centers the sidewalks are guaranteed to be plastered with the stuff unless you get tens of millions of cleaners.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?