How to recycle chewing gum into bins!

Filed in Blog by on April 1, 2011 4 Comments
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gumdrop bin deigned by Anna Bullus

gumdrop bin deigned by Anna Bullus

A while ago we bought you a story about Gummy Bins.

These were designed with the chewing gum lover in mind. Did you know that 935 million packs of gum are chewed by 28 million people in the UK every year? Unfortunately, 80-90% of chewing gum ends up as litter which costs us £138 million to clear up every year.

When Solihull council trialled a Gummy Bin, they reduced chewing gum litter by 72% over a six month period.

You might remember from the story, that the collected chewing gum was recycled into drainage and construction material.

This week I came across a similar story involving designer, Anna Bullus. She has set up a company to tackle the global problem of gum litter. She has been gathering up chewing gum to create a new plastic polymer that she calls “Bullus Recycled Gum Polymer,” (or BRGP) which can then be moulded into new products. So far she is making bright pink chewing gum bins to encourage people to discard their chewing gum properly, but I hope there are other products in the pipeline.

According to her statistics, cleaning chewing gum off the streets in the UK, costs three times the price of a piece of gum! If everyone in the UK stopped irresponsibly discarding their gum on Oxford Street today, it would still take over 4 months to clean the existing gum off the street.

The GumDrop Bins are bright pink so you can’t miss them. Let me know if you see one on your travels!

About the Author ()

I am a long time supporter of the Green and Sustainable lifestyle. After being caught in the Boscastle floods in 2004, our family begun a journey to respect and promote the importance of Earth's fragile ecosystem, that focussed on reducing waste. Inspired by the beauty and resourcefulness of this wonderful planet, I have published numerous magazine articles on green issues and the author of four books.

Comments (4)

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  1. Julie Day says:

    I’ve not seen one of those but have a few of the other kinds at a bus stop in Bromley, Kent. Very intuitive.

  2. Poppy says:

    @Julie Day: Shouldn’t that be… in-chew-ative? 😉

  3. Compostwoman says:

    What date is it today??

  4. pop says:

    cool there is 1 in milton kyens

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