#1 Cause of Litter in NYC

Categories: Environment, chewing gum, Garbage, litter, recycling

Dec 14, 2009 09:12 pm 3 Comments

"Mommy, what are all those black blobs everywhere on the streets?" Well, Timmy-- you're about to find out.

Did you know chewing gum was invented in New York City? Back in 1871 Thomas Adams invented what we today call chewing gum. Only back then, it was completely natural and 100% biodegradable as it was made from the chicle of the Mexican sapodilla trees. He liked chewing it, decided to add some flavor, and voila—next thing you know chewing gum was on sale in vending machines on the NYC subway for one penny per piece. Tutti Frutti was the first gum to be marketed this way by Thomas, and had a picture of New York’s City Hall on the box.

So as chewing gum was invented in New York City, you might not be surprised to hear that it also happens to be the largest form of litter out there over plastic bags, over plastic bottles, even over cigarette butts. The figure might be anywhere up to 40% from the various research I’ve done, but it’s hard to pin down so this is not set in stone. And yet, it’s officially prohibited from A. spitting out, B. littering. Essentially, if you’re spitting it out then you’re automatically littering as well. Double whammy. However, has anyone ever witnessed a ticket for spitting gum? I certainly haven’t. And in a city where spitting is banned in part due to our alarming rate of Tuberculosis infections (the spore can survive up to 3 days in the air once spit out), it’s hard to comprehend why the law wouldn’t be enforced while we face other epidemics such as Swine Flu and West Nile Virus, all also habitable on spat out chewing gum. Um, gross?

Now get this-- the city spends anywhere from $1.50-$3 per piece of gum in order to clean it up. That is a lot of taxpayer money on chewing gum people! And it’s coming out of your check too, just not everyone else’s. We’re talking tens of millions of dollars a year. All wasted. Simply because people are too lazy to throw the gum away into a trash receptacle. (This is not much different however from the way cigarette butts are treated. People simply don’t view them as trash because they are so used to seeing them everywhere else!) And it’s not easy to clean up the spat gum up once it’s out there either. You have to use heavy-duty vacuum type machinery, which in itself is very expensive (up to $8000 per machine), and/or toxic chemicals in order to disengage the gum. Why? Because not long after chewing gum’s invention the demand reached such huge levels that supply simply couldn’t be met at the going rate. Specifically, it was the chicle of the sapodilla trees, the very essence of chewing gum, which accounted for gum’s troubles. The trees could only be tapped once, and then required 3-4 years of rest in order to recoup and make back what they lost. But in the craze that was modern gum chewing, people couldn’t wait for the trees. They wanted their chewing gum and they wanted it now. (Sound familiar? Agh, the beginnings of consumerism...)

Instead, a synthetic form for gum was invented and replaced the chicle. What was this new magic material? Oh, just the same poisonous substances in Styrofoam and plastic bags. This is the “gum base” you see on the ingredients list on your gum packaging. And well, corporations didn’t think it was necessary to disclose what exactly was in that gum base. And since our wonderful government sides most often with corporations giving them more rights than human beings, they were never held accountable to disclose those mysterious poisonous ingredients. According to this article from the Bright Hub, “It was established that the mysterious gum base is made up of styrene-butadiene rubber, polyethylene, and polyvinyl acetate; the natural latex ingredient was very minimal.” Awesome! I'm chewing on a toxic plastic bag! 5 years from now, we’ll produce another 1 million tons of chewing gum, and most of that will end up stuck somewhere in the environment, if not all of it. Continue reading to article on some good news for organic and natural chewing gum revived by small cooperatives in Mexico based on the original model. But beware of what you are looking at in this post. What you see is full of microorganisms that carry airborne diseases. You touch them every day. You bring them into your homes, wipe them on your rugs, mix them with other nasty stuff from the street (not to mention animal waste), etc. What you see is simply New York’s largest litter problem: chewing gum.

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Eleanor
December 15, 2009 - 9:49am

I never thought chewing gum was bad until now. I had no idea it's made out of all that toxic stuff... that's really scary. Ew.

michaelrapp76
December 15, 2009 - 6:01pm

Very nice article. I don't think I've had a piece of gum in 10 years, but this will make me want to make natural gum in the business that I am forming. thank you for the article.

Ned Hamson
December 17, 2009 - 12:25pm

So, if we soaked those coffee cups in syntheticaly flavored vanilla, then cut them up in bight-sized, we could recycle the cups into gum, thenuse liquid nitrogen to freeze and then scrape up the gum, make new cups - and call it Yuck Recycling. Good story. Will never be able to chew Adams Black Jack gum again - sigh. Keep up gooey good work!

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