Nasty chewing gum!, originally uploaded by “Keir”.
This evocative piece quite literally comments on what happens to the world when we discard our gum (in the wrong place).
The artwork is from Brighton on the south coast of England.
Of course, the real trick with addressing the dilemmas represented by all these gum-spattered streets and by-ways of the world would be to discover a bio-degradable gum, which is a task that Revolymer, Ltd. (which grew out of the University of Bristol; see below), is indeed taking on.
They’ve got a great website with videos and other details on the initial research into a gum which appears, in preliminary trials, to disintegrate within months in regular rain water.
Revolymer is testing their product at the epicentre of committed gum clean-up efforts (as you’ve read in earlier postings), the United Kingdom.
As their website notes, they are conducting…
…street trials in towns in the UK with the help of local councils to prove our product is removed naturally compared to commercial gums which remain stuck to the pavement.
(As noted, some of the initial research that led to the formation of “clean gum” and the formation of Revolymer was conducted at University of Bristol. To read more, and to see a photo of Professor Terence Cosgrove wielding a piece of the “clean gum” in question, click here.)
Today’s Kirkintolloch Herald reported on efforts of a small Scottish town in Mrs. Gum Guy’s ancestral homeland to take on the ongoing “sticky problem” on its streets: the plague that sweeps the UK, discarded chewing gum on the pavement of villages everywhere.
The initiative, which involved equipment from a Hampshire-based company called Gumclear, was spearheaded by the Business for Kirkintolloch initiative, as the article reports:
An end could be in sight to a sticky problem that has given residents cause for concern for years.
A new way to keep the streets of Kirkintilloch free of unsightly chewing gum was given a test run last week.
Lex Gaston, who heads up the Business for Kirkintilloch initiative, invited senior councillors and officials to watch a demonstration by Hampshire-based company Gumclear.
The initiative, which aims to boost Cowgate and Townhead, had received various complaints about the amount of discarded chewing gum on town centre pavements.
Lex said: “The demonstration went very well. It really is an interesting machine.
“Everyone seemed delighted with it and we were told it would only take three days to clear the whole of Cowgate and Townhead.
“If we were lucky enough to get funding for this, seeing the town’s streets clean again might also make people show a little more civic pride and dispose of their chewing gum properly.”
On behalf of my friends in high schools, dining services, Green and Clean fleets and Chewing Gum Action Groups, and in the custodial services (in fact, one of my friends in that line of work suggested that I should widely share this particular bit of advice a day or so ago as he looked on, with some small dismay, at my fists full of gum, ready to be widely shared), a friendly and simple reminder:
Once it’s unwrapped, chewing gum belongs in one of two places: Your mouth, or in the garbage can.
(You may now return to your regular programming…)
romeo & juliet €1, originally uploaded by ThomasEagle.
A couple of posts back, we wrote about the tradition of affixing love notes to a family house in Verona that’s believed to have inspired the Juliet side of Romeo and Juliet.
As Discovery News notes, earlier this year, all of the letters, gum and graffiti have been removed from the house, a cleaning task that takes place every two or three years, all with a very important holiday in mind:
…according to Vittorio Di Dio, Verona’s public works counselor, cleaning brushes and elbow grease are applied regularly every two to three years on the house’s medieval walls.
“Love notes are growing and growing everywhere,” Di Dio told Discovery News. “You get to the point when you really need a clean-up. The reason for the present cleaning is simple: We must be ready for the big day, Valentine’s Day.”
Check out “Love Notes Scrubbed From Juliet’s House” for all the details, including a great video.
Ben Wilson, Chewing Gum Artist, originally uploaded by Kevin the Collie.
We just posted a video about the work of Ben Wilson who, amidst all the discarded gum of Britain (see numerous posts, elsewhere in AndrewsGumWorld about this scourge), has decided to make art of it.
If you’d like to explore more of Ben’s work of turning used chewing gum into something somehow more beautiful, check out this great Flickr gallery of his work (and props out to Rahid1 for gathering many examples of this work into one place on Flickr).
We’ve featured the great British designer Anna Bullus before with her gum recycling bins made out of recycled gum. One other great product she’s produced is the Gumnetics pad, a memory foam-like cushion, which also uses recycled gum and bio-resin. You can see the mint flavored version above.
If you didn’t read about it the first time through, here’s some insight into her work on the Inhabitat website and you can peruse more of Bullus’s work on her own incredible site here.
