Non-stick chewing gum

Gum splattered streets could soon be no more thanks to a virtually non-stick chewing gum that has been invented by UK scientists. If it passes European health and safety tests, it could be in our shops by next year, the chemical company developing the gum says.

Revolymer claims its product is easier to remove from pavements, shoes and carpets than gums currently on sale. Its research was presented at the BA Festival of Science, in York.

Chewing gum clean-up costs can be extremely high. London's Westminster Council recently released figures showing that it had spent more than £100,000 a year to remove chewing gum from its streets; in Oxford the total was £45,000. For years, scientists have been working on ways to solve the problem.

Now Revolymer, a Bristol University spin-out company, claims that it has created a new material which can be added to gum that makes it much easier to remove from surfaces. The material is formed from long chains of molecules, called polymers, which have both water-loving (hydrophilic) and oil-loving (hydrophobic) properties.

The polymer's affinity for oil means that it can be easily mixed into the rest of the ingredients needed to create chewing gum; but it is its attraction to water that gives it its non-stick abilities.

Chief Scientific Officer of Revolymer, Professor Terence Cosgrove, said: "The hydrophilic coating means that you always get a film of water around the gum and that is one of the reasons it is easy to remove - and, in some cases, doesn't stick at all."