Frequently Asked Questions

That’s simple. Gummy Bins® is a breakthrough in the chewing gum problem because it changes people’s behaviour.

The different, quirky look and feel of the Gummy Bins® ensures that they are immediately recognisable as containers for collecting chewing gum and this is a great step towards ensuring people use them.

In fact, Gummy Bins has two major advantages: it stops gum reaching the pavement in the first place, and it makes a contribution to the environment.

To get a reaction and be cool!

The Gummy Bins® are deliberately designed to catch people’s attention. We’ve often seen people walk up to the bins simply to find out what they are. When people find out what the bins do for the first time, they remember for ever … and they tell their friends and family too.

There’s also the matter of ‘street cred’. Dropping or spitting out chewing gum has a culture of its own in the UK. Gummy Bins® are designed to be strange, quirky and unconventional so that they appeal to all gum users. In other words, they look nothing like a boring bin so that everyone can use them without being boring!!

The oval Gummy Club bins contain a cartridge which holds up to 250 pieces of gum. The cartridges in Gummy Street bins can hold either 250 or 500 pieces of gum, so Gummy Street bins are better for high use areas.

No problem! It is still less litter on the street. The Gummy Club® is fire retartdant to the V2 standard so that if cigarette butts are dropped into the bins, for example, the bins remain undamaged. The Gummy Street® is actually fire retartant to the V0 standard the highest level of fire retardancy available.

Because it’s made from the same rubber as car tyres! Goodyear in Texas actually supplies Wrigleys with the synthetic rubber base for its chewing gum. Gum also contains sweeteners, a plasticiser to keep it soft and flavourings – usually essential oils such as peppermint, spearmint, etc.

The rubber content of chewing gum is what makes it non-biodegradable. Rubber consists of long linking polymers which offer few locations for it to be oxidised by atmospheric oxygen. It’s a very stable compound and is resistant to ultra violet light. Even stomach acid doesn’t touch it if it’s swallowed.

But it wasn’t always like this. In Greek and Mayan times, gum was a completely natural product made from tree sap. The Greeks favoured the mastic tree and the Aztecs and Mayans used chicle, a resin from the sapodilla tree. Who says we’re more advanced in the 21st Century?

The chewing gum problem is an ingrained social habit in the UK with its own subversive culture. Without being pious, doesn’t that mean that we all have a role to play? Here are a few choices:

• Don’t chew gum.
• If you do, put it in a bin.
• Use a Gummy Bin and make a contribution to the environment at the same time.
• Lobby your local council to run anti chewing gum litter campaigns and put up Gummy Bins.
• Get your friends, family, acquaintances, work colleagues and other gum chewers to have a look at this web site!

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is the Government body tasked with tackling the chewing gum issue, along with other forms of litter. DEFRA works in conjunction with:

• ENCAMS (Environmental CAMpaignS), who run the “Keep Britain Tidy” campaigns.
• The Chewing Gum Action Group, which brings together DEFRA, Wrigleys, the Local Government Association and the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management to seek sustainable solutions to irresponsible gum disposal.
• The All Party Parliamentary Group for Local Environmental Quality.

In the UK, the estimate is that about £300 of taxpayers’ money is spent every minute trying to clean up waste gum. We find this a very sobering thought when there are so many other much more worthwhile uses for our taxes.

This figure is based on the last official Government estimate of £158 million spent on clean-up costs, as quoted by Baroness Hayman in the House of Commons in July 1997. No doubt costs have risen further since then.

Here’s an even more unbelievable fact: waste gum is more valuable than a packet of gum in a shop. Between the packet and the pavement, a piece of gum increases in value by up to 15 times. A single piece of gum costs about 3p to buy and between 10p and £1.50 per piece to clean up. Go figure.

No. It usually involves a lot of water and chemicals which could harm the environment. The harsh cleaning methods are needed because waste gum physically bonds itself to most hard surfaces.

Pavements, tarmac and concrete are particularly at risk because the surfaces are rough and the gum has even more grip. With the aid of atmospheric sulphur and chlorine, the spat out gum hardens into a ‘pavement pat’ and becomes extremely difficult to remove.

Listen up! If people know about Gummy Bins, you won’t have to clean up waste gum at all. That’s the whole point! Education. Prevention (not cure). Recycling.

But if you’re really interested, there are four basic methods for removing gum. Did you know that at least 80% of gum bought never finds its way into a bin?

1. Scraping. Useful on shiny surfaces, but not on pavements, tarmac and concrete where the surface is rough.
2. Freezing. Uses expensive, high pressure dry ice which freezes and blasts the gum deposits off the pavement. However, it stains the surface, spits bits of frozen gum everywhere and it’s really noisy.
3. Chemicals. To soften the gum so it can be pressure washed away. Unfortunately, the chemicals are expensive, toxic and cannot be washed into the sewerage system. They also stain the surface and can smell very nasty.
4. Pressure washing. The most common method which has three varieties: cold water, hot water and steam machines. Of all the cleaning methods, pressure washing is probably the most effective – but it’s still not that good and it’s really expensive. A two-man team and a machine cost approximately £50,000 per annum to run. The machines operate at about 3,000 psi and use 250 gallons of water per hour (!!). They’re a danger to pedestrians, they damage the grout between paving stones and cause them to lift because the water gets underneath, and they leave an oily mark where the gum has been.

In other words, it’s a lot easier, cheaper and better for the environment to put waste gum in a Gummy Bin. Thank you.