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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: 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!!