After you might have chewed chewing gums and throw them away, you would believe that’s the end. That was before. Chewing gums are now being recycled as a raw material for making sneakers. This idea was conceptualised and implemented through a collaborative effort of Iamsterdam, designer Explicit Wear, and Gumdrop, a sustainability company.
What the two companies did was that they built the sneakers’ soles with a material call Gum-Tec, which has chewing gums at 20% in its composition. And because the shoes’ soles are made from Gum-Tec, they are referred to as Gumshoe.
When quizzed about whether there would be enough chewing gums to keep up with the manufacturing of Gum-Tec, the project director claimed that 3.3 million pounds of chewing gums make it into Amsterdam pavements each year. The director stated that removing the gums cost the Amsterdam’s government millions of dollars.
Therefore the innovation would help in removing and recycling gums into a useful material and reduce the burden of cleaning from the government.
To make four pairs of shoes, the companies require 2.2 pounds (1 kg) of gums, meaning they aren’t likely to run out of gums. In an email sent by Jonathan Van Loon, the spokesperson for the collaboration, to The Verge, Van Loon says Gum-Tec is as strong as normal rubber and even smell of gum — minus all the stickiness.
The sneakers are expected to be in the market by June and cost $232.
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