What? Is there plastic in chewing gum?
We all chew our way through kilos of Bubbelicious, Benbits and Stimorol, and no one gives it a second thought. Until chewing gum with ‘plastic free’ on the label suddenly appeared in the health food shop. Wait: what? Is there plastic in chewing gum? Is that bad? For our health or for the environment? Ha, luckily, our heroes at Keuringsdienst van Waarde are looking into it.
The Keuringsdienst starts with the producer of plastic-free chewing gum. ‘Plastic-free means that we use a natural gum instead of a synthetic gum,’ says Milan Dontje, the inventor of plastic-free chewing gum. ‘The chewing gum we’re used to now contains microplastics and nanoplastics.’ Ouch, that sounds dangerous. And according to Milan, that natural gum, a rubber-like substance, comes from a tree, and the Maya were already chewing it in ancient times.
One hundred percent natural, because that natural chewing gum decomposes much faster, says Milan, so it is more sustainable and less harmful to the environment, because together we throw away an enormous amount of chewing gum.
From a tree or from the factory
A rubber tree like that grows in Amsterdam’s Hortus, so the Keuringsdienst goes to take a look. Sure enough, there it is: a sticky sap comes from the bark and leaves of the tree, and you could make chewing gum from it. And that is exactly what happens, for example in a factory in Istanbul, where the Keuringsdienst receives a warm welcome.
It’s called gum base, it’s as tough as rubber, and a chewing gum manufacturer only has to add peppermint flavour and sugar, or a sugar substitute, and you’re done. ‘The industry calls this product gum base. It contains rubber, resin from trees and synthetic resin, vegetable fats, fillers and antioxidants,’ says the manufacturer. ‘And you can make tasty chewing gum from it.’
Chewing on a bicycle tyre
Rubber, resin… is that natural? And edible? And is plastic unhealthy? Katja Loos, a chemist at the University of Groningen, knows all about that. She is an expert in plastics. You are chewing on a lump of plastic, she confirms. ‘On those artificial rubbers, which you also know from your bicycle tyres,’ she says. ‘They are made from the same stuff.’
And what about that natural chewing gum, what is it made of? ‘From the rubber tree, but it’s the same molecule. Chemically speaking, there is no difference whatsoever.’ So there is no difference from the so-called plastic chewing gum. Does it break down faster in nature? ‘No, it takes years, perhaps even decades, before it breaks down. It falls apart into small pieces; those are the microplastics you hear about. Animals eat them, and then we ingest them too.’
Never spit it out
Conclusion: plastic-free chewing gum contains just as much plastic as the other kind – it may be natural in origin, but at the molecular level it remains exactly the same. And chewing gum should never end up in nature, the so-called plastic-free chewing gum no more than the regular kind.
Quite a load of bullshit, then, from that natural chewing gum producer: the gum is chemically identical to the chewing gum that already exists, and its claim that plastic-free chewing gum breaks down faster than regular gum in the roadside verge or on the pavement is completely contradicted by the expert in chemistry.
