Anna Bullus, the English designer who invented garbage cans for recycling chewing gum

Collected in small street containers, they then become keychains, coffee mugs, glasses. And even shoes and boots.

di |
CHEWING GUM RECYCLING

350 billion are consumed worldwide each year, 30 million in Italy. These are enormous figures, which have a direct impact on the environment and sustainability, as in many cases the chewing gum end up on the street, or even worse, on the sidewalks or in a public garden. Spaces for everyone, where they can collect a chewing gum It's a long and expensive undertaking. To clean just fifty centimetres of asphalt it takes at least half an hour and costs between 50 cents and 2 eurosAll wasted money. And to avoid this, by creating a new business around chewing gum and its recycling, a brilliant designer has embarked on an adventure in London.

CHEWING GUM RECYCLING

A versatile and potentially useful material. chewing gum, the very common chewing gums, once used can become a real resource, managing to free himself from the annoying role of being tamong the most common and annoying municipal waste. According to some British studies, in fact, tires are second only to cigarette butts, and every year the London government spends around 50 million pounds on this specific, and sticky, cleanup. A young woman has come up with the solution to this problem: Anna Bullus, born in 1984, who found a way to transform chewing gum into everyday objects, such as bins, boots or cell phone covers. To achieve this he used his university studies, discovering that the main ingredient of this product is the base rubber, commonly known as synthetic rubber, a type of polymer similar to plastic. And as such it can be used in the same way. This is how he founded Gumdrop to collect used chewing gum and reborn it in a new form.

ALSO READ: Recycled Park, the floating park in the Netherlands made entirely from recycled plastic waste. Brave kids (photos)

CHEWING GUM RECYCLING3

CHEWING GUM RECYCLING

Anna, a former student at the University of Brighton's College of Arts and Humanities, has been included by the University of Brighton among the “Women of Impact”, thanks to her invention, considered with a strong innovative impactThe road to this goal, however, was very long and difficult and involved several turning points. The main one was undoubtedly the one that allowed her to overcome the "collection" problem. In order to recycle the tires, in fact, a way had to be found to convince users to hand them in. So Anna invented some bright pink baskets With their rounded, bubble-like shapes, they invite chewers to throw their gum inside. The containers themselves, as Bullus explains, are made from polymer derived from collected and recycled gum.

CHEWING GUM RECYCLING2

GUMDROP ANNA BULLUS

Above each bin, Gumdrop has placed a sign explaining that any gum collected will be recycled in new objects: key rings, paper cups, coffee mugs, cell phone covers. But also boots and sneakers. A little trick that gave stunning results, so much so that it has been adopted by several institutions, including the University of Winchester and Heathrow Airport in London. In this way, the company contributes to clean environments and recycling at the same time, also collaborating with other manufacturers and companies around the world to produce useful products from processed chewing gum. Efforts that have given rise to the most diverse objects, all strictly green.

The photos are taken from the Facebook page Gumdrop Ltd.

Sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date. Click here!

ALL THE WAYS TO RECYCLE PLASTIC:

Want to see a selection of our news?

Don't Waste