Is there a better place for your chewing gum that isn't the sidewalk, and then my foot???
I don’t believe in my entire life that I’ve ever spat my gum out on the ground. Like never. I can confidently type that for all of you to read. It falls in line with “do unto others as you would have them do unto to you” for me, believe it or not. It may be corny, but it’s a fact for me, I don’t want you walking around with my gum on the bottom of your shoe, and I sure as shit don’t want you taking that gum into your car, on the carpet, or into your home. Not like a certain somebody who shall remain nameless but isn’t me, or my three daughters, but lives with me, recently did. I don’t wear shoes in houses for this reason, combined with the other reason that feng shui believes that when you wear your street shoes inside your home you’re bringing all that qi/energy of the dirty outside world into your home and spreading it around. Plus I have a germ phobia, which really makes me go “hmmm” as to why anybody would want to walk around their home with lord knows what on the bottom of their shoes.
Which, if you stop and think about this, it is actually hilarious; because I have three dogs, with twelve paws, and they walk through each others shit, but are still allowed on my bed. So, what gives? Actually, let’s not go down this rabbit hole, since it really should be a completely separate post.
Coming back around to the spitting of gum on the ground thing. If you’re one of those people who chews gum regularly, I propose this to you. How about you carry tissues around with you and instead of spitting your gum out on the sidewalk for innocent, unsuspecting fellow humans to potentially step in, how about you put in in the tissue, then into a Ziploc baggie in your purse, or pocket, to be thrown out at the first trash can you see?
If this is too many steps, which after reading it back I can appreciate that it actually is. How about this instead. Chew your gum until you come across a public trash can. Once you locate said trash can, you simply spit your gum into it.
That’s much simpler, and I do believe it sets you up for success, rather than my original suggestion. To help you become a responsible gum chewer of society here are some neat facts for you to “chew on.” HAHAHA
Sorry I just couldn’t resist, it was toooooo good!
Anyway back to some facts:
approximately 374 billion pieces of gum are sold every year, that’s a ton of gum ending up on the bottom of our shoes, or our bottoms when we sit in it, or in landfill.
A Canadian documentary filmmaker; Andrew Nisker made a film about the gum issue, called DARK SIDE OF THE CHEW. Which I didn’t know about, but am going to check and see if I can find it on Netflix tonight! Anyway, he made the film after learning that gum waste is number two on the litter list, right under cigarette butts. As you know, I wrote about the latter on October 18th, about how to get smokers to dispose of their butts responsibly. Which we’re still working on.
As for busting the multi-million dollar clean up issue that is the gum litter problem; there’s this brilliant company http://gumdropltd.com/gumdrop-bin/ who obviously feel as strongly as I do about people just who spit their gum on the ground. For the love of my Louboutin shoes, they came up with these super awesome gum bins for used gum. Gum chewers spit their gum in them, when they fill up, the bins are collected with the gum inside them, and then this is where it gets super cool. They recycle and process the gum into other things! How f’n cool and completely brilliant is that? Man oh man, do I ever wish I was Anna Bullus, who took her disdain for gum litter and turned it into doing good for Mother Earth. How cool are gumdrop bins??? And why don’t we see these all over the place???
Whoever is in charge of placing trash and recycling bins the world over, must get on this. Gumdrop bins are a genius solution to a disgusting problem. Yay Anna, I’m with her.
