Gum litters Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. (Image via.)
After pleading for marketers to cool it with their greenwashing in this post, of course I would read international news this morning about environmentally friendly (“green”) chewing gum, suggesting my quip last week was off.
From my post:
Events like this one make me hope that the phenomenon of greenwashing doesn’t grow any bigger and spoil the green market for companies that are socially-responsible. A couple of years ago, I recall, a chewing gum manufacturer was claiming its product was green because it was easier to peel off of the street. No joke.
Today, I learned there’s such thing as the Chewing Gum Action Group in the U.K. that seeks to cure the country of what is apparently a problematic level of chewing-gum litter. It even has its own micro-site.
From a recent report it released:
It can be expensive to remove chewing gum from surfaces. It is possible that local authorities that carry out regular cleansing can spend up to £200,000 a year. It has been suggested that the average spend is in the region of £13,000 a year, but this will vary between local authorities depending on the amount of litter and attention spent on cleansing.
So, I stand corrected: chewing gum can be green if it’s easy to remove from surfaces. I insist it’s pretty silly to market green chewing gum to consumers, though. A lad who thinks gum belongs stuck on a bus stop instead of in the trash isn’t the most captive audience for environmentalists. Green marketing directed at them is still the intellectual equivalent of, well, chewing gum.
