A n d r e w s G u m W o r l d

It’s perhaps challenging to keep up with the gum news coming out of Britain these days, but we must, and yesterday’s Northants Evening Telegraph reported on Wellingborough’s efforts to tackle the scourge.

The reporting in yesterday’s Telegraph began with these updates by Andrew Papworth:

Two machines each worth £26,000 [US$48,500±] are being used on the streets of Wellingborough in the latest bid to beat the problem of discarded chewing gum.

It means gum that would have once been left on the pavement for weeks can now be cleared up in seconds thanks to the machine’s high-power suction.

It will also mean that Wellingborough Council, which bought the machines, can clean graffiti to help meet tough new targets for cleaning up abusive artwork.

 

You can see Frank Sabato pictured above with one of the two machines which use suction, not simply spraying water, to accomplish its work. You can read the entire article here.

Juicy Fruit, originally uploaded by GeezerDan.

Back across the pond to the Borough of Poole in the UK (one of the cities supported by the Chewing Gum Action Group), where a yet to be named life-sized gum mascot (a contest is in the wings, though, to name it) encouraged residents of the borough to be binners, not sinners (is there a level of morality to chewing gum?).

This afternoon’s Dorset Echo tells more of the tale of the pink crusader, including this quote from the portfolio holder for the environment for Poole:

“Irresponsible disposal of chewing gum causes unsightly stains across the streets of Poole,” said Cllr Don Collier, portfolio holder for the environment.“We are keen to reinforce the message to the public that chewing gum is litter and should not be discarded on the street.”

Last year, the borough spent £48,000 (US$91,000±) cleaning gum off it streets.

Now some gum cleaning news from this side of the pond.

A downtown improvement council from Bridgeport, one of Connecticut’s poorer cities, saw a GumBuster on the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs” (for additional coverage on Bridgeport’s efforts, check out the show’s blog here).

It was a perfect solution to the gum stuck to the streets and sidewalks of their downtown, but they couldn’t afford the $6,200 it cost to buy a new one, so they turned to eBay and found a used one for $1,300. They spent another $300 on a generator at Home Depot, and they were in business.

As reported in The Record, from northern New Jersey, it’s made the task incredibly easier:

(Downtown improvement council officials) say it’s about as easy as, well - walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Workers spray steam over the wads to loosen them up, then dissolve the rest with a solution of soap and water and scrape up the residue.

While you may not be able to get quite as good a deal as Bridgeport did on eBay, you can still get your own GumBuster on the site for $5,950 or a used one (with free generator) for $3,990 (prices and availability as of Tuesday, August 12).

Colwyn Bay Civic Offices, originally uploaded by scottpa100.

Conwy County Council officials in North Wales (who work in the civic offices pictured above) have also joined in the fight against gum (and other litter, including discarded cigarette butts), as reported this past week in both The Daily Post and North Wales Pioneer.

Those under 18 will not receive instant fines, but rather yellow warning cards, as reported in the Post:

YELLOW cards will be dished out to youngsters who spit out chewing gum…

Adults who litter Colwyn Bay with….chewing gum, will be receive fixed penalty fines as part of a clampdown by police and Conwy council.

But because the fines cannot be issued to under 18s, North Wales Police and Conwy council officials will hand “yellow card” warnings to younger culprits.

If they offend again, parents will be visited by enforcement officers, in a bid to keep the streets clean.

In the Pioneer, Phil Andrews who runs the Colwyn Bay Pet Shop on Sea View Road suggested:

“I think it is a good idea, especially with the new paving going down, to keep it tidy and clean… I think the amount is a good deterrent, I wouldn’t want to be fined £75 but I imagine it is going to cause some trouble when people are fined.”

Cleaning Tiananmen, originally uploaded by Roberto Castillo.

The Vancouver Sun did a piece with some amazing insights on the “Olympifying” of Beijing for the Olympics which began last Friday, including how the country has mobilized to avoid the “luan,” or chaos, that comes with events like this. You can read the whole piece here, including this description on the cleaning of chewing gum (the photo above, from Flickr and Robert Castillo portrays the same efforts in Tiananmen Square):

On Wanfujing, the famous shopping street, migrant workers are on their hand and knees every sunrise, using razor blades to scrape chewing gum off the pink tiles.

Maurizio Savini is a 46-year-old Italian artist who sometimes uses chewing gum as the medium for his sculptures. This is one of his pieces (“Still Boggie-Woggie,” 1999; you can check out more of his art on the wondrous DIY blog MAKE), and you can read more about his approach to his work (written in a way that only art critics can sometimes write; fasten your seatbelts!) and see some more of it here.

Elsewhere, we’ve spoken about some of the ways that the Chewing Gum Action Group in England has tackled the problem of gum litter. Above is an ad by Bray Leino, a Devon-based ad agency, that was part of a £600,000 campaign to help get the point across about where gum belongs after it’s been chewed.

Smartstreets-Smartbin™: cigarette bin and chewing gum bin in Hammersmith and Fulham (UK), originally uploaded by smartstreets.

One company in the UK, Smartstreets-Smartbin™, has decided to tackle the dual threats of discarded chewing gum and cigarettes with its Smartbin™, which can be found not only in the UK but throughout Europe, and even on the long-running and popular British television soap opera, Coronation Street.

In some earlier posts, we’ve explored the importance of proper gum disposal and the growing world of gum recycling bins to help meet that need.

Above is a really cool chrome one from our friends at Gummy Bins, a company more generally known for their more whimsical gum bin offerings:

In North America, Gummy Bin (which is a company that, perhaps unsurprisingly, began in the UK), has Recycle Media as its exclusive distributor. the company is a full service environmental advertising and marketing company, which does a lot of really great stuff that promotes the importance of recycling and re-use (to explore more of what they do, click here).

The section of their site that features Gummy Bins offers some haunting statistics on gum use (and abuse) in the United States, noting that discarded gum in the United States is now considered one of the most difficult forms of litter to remove in urban centers. Among the facts, figures and theories they include are these:

• The cost for gum removal is roughly US$2 to $3 per discarded piece of gum
• Gum chewers in the US buy US$2 billion of gum each year
• The majority of discarded chewing gum never reaches the litter bin

So, at the risk of sounding schoolmarmish, do remember that unwrapped gum belongs in one of two places: in your mouth or in the garbage (or, perhaps increasingly, in the Gummy Bin).