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takyon writes:

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.

Butyl rubber/polyisobutylene.

Original Submission