A few years ago I owned the domain name ‘chewinggum.co.uk’.
I think I paid 99p for it. Today, you can buy the domain name from Gherkin
Domains, but you will have to pay £1,999.95 to own it! With hindsight I wished
I had kept hold of the ownership.
I designed and operated the website. My primary objective
was to draw attention to the disgusting habit some chewers of gum have, i.e.,
they discard it anywhere, except in waste bins. Consequently, countless millions
of chewed pieces of gum adhere to pavements and buildings, shopping malls,
schools and wherever people congregate. Even supermarkets that sell the stuff
are plagued by chewing gum blight. By drawing attention to what is taking place
I hoped councillors, politicians and those who cared about the worsening
situation would bring pressure to bear on manufacturers of gum to only make biodegradable
gum. I also wanted them to provide wrapping paper for the disposal of gum after
it has been chewed.
I contacted the Keep Britain Tidy Campaign, but, although
sympathetic, they seemed reluctant to present a case for improving the
situation. (They now have a gum page*, but not very effective.)
I tried conversing with Wrigley by email and by letters and
by telephone, but they didn’t want to know. I recruited MPs to draw attention
to the matter, but to no avail. To the best of my knowledge, not one of them
raised the matter in Parliament. On the other hand, Southend-on-Sea Borough
Council responded favourably, since they recognised the problem was exceptionally
bad. It was so acute I nicknamed Southend-on-Sea, ‘Chewing Gum City’! This
caught the attention of BBC Radio Essex, who wanted me to speak about the situation
on their early morning show – I think that was before Ray Clark and his ‘Planet
Ray’ programme. None of this got me anywhere, except I must have touched the
raw nerve of a few people who sent me abusive and threatening emails.
After about 2 ½ years, I had enough, and I gave up, and I
withdrew my Chewing Gum website. It was costing a lot to maintain, and I felt I
was bashing my head against a brick wall. Furthermore, I was getting uptight
every time I saw pieces of discarded gum on the pavement. I threw away the CD
that was my only record of the website, and put the matter out of my mind – That’s
until NOW! Why? Because when I recently went to the Odeon cinema to watch a
James Bond film, I was sickened to see numerous bits of gum stuck to the outside
walls of the cinema and hundreds of pieces of gum that had been dropped on the
paving of the pedestrian precinct. At great expense the Borough Council repaved
the whole of the High Street, but a year or so later, the gum is as
bad as ever, perhaps worse.
I remember conducting a survey at nearby W. H. Smith when I
counted and photographed pieces gum within a square yard. The intention was to
repeat the count a year later, but by then I had given up all hope of achieving
my aim of persuading manufacturers to only produce biodegradable gum. Failing
that, I would like to have seen a law passed that only biodegradable gum could
be sold in the UK. Expecting the miscreants to act with consideration and
kindness out of respect for fellow citizens was out of the question. The situation today is utterly hopeless, on
account of generations who do not care about living in a gigantic dustbin that
contains bird droppings, for that is the appearance of discarded gum.
Note
Some progress is being made. See this website:
Biodegradable
chewing gum lands in Waitrose stores nationwide
Other Links
Chewing Gum.Co.UK (Domain currently for Sale at £1,999.95)
Why Bin 4 Gum
Anti-litter lobby
backs 50c tax on chewing gum
How much
does it cost to produce chewing gum?
Wrigley.Co.UK
Wrigley.Com
Southend Borough Council
*Keep Britain Tidy (Gum Page)
Planet Ray – Presenter Profile
No comments:
Post a Comment