French design students Hugo Maupetit and Vivian Fischer have developed a method for collecting discarded chewing gum and turning it into colourful, recycled plastic skateboard wheels.
The students installed special collection boards in urban areas of Nantes, France, where passersby could stick their used gum rather than dropping it on the floor.
Passersby stick their gum to public collection boards
The gum was then collected every week before the gum was ground together with the collection board itself, which is made from polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) plastic.
The PMMA helps to stabilise the chewing gum as it is melted together and machined into wheels.
"During our test phases we needed between 10 and 30 chewing gums per wheel, depending on the size of the gum and the desired hardness of the wheel," Maupetit told Dezeen. The gum is cleaned and injection-moulded to create skateboard wheels
Chewing gum, which has existed since antiquity, was originally made from the sap of different trees. But most modern gum consists of a synthetic rubber called polyisobutylene that is also used to create car tyres.
It is estimated that as little as 10 per cent of this gum is disposed of correctly, which means that in the UK alone, local councils have to spend £60 million a year cleaning up the other 90 per cent.
The students collected more than 60 chewing gums with one board
Rather than having this plastic go to waste, Maupetit and Fischer hoped to give it a second life as skate...