The Greens cited figures that impressed many Bundestag deputies: every year Germany spends $900 million on combating used chewing gum, three times more than, for example, the United Kingdom allocates. As reported by Novye Izvestia, parliamentarians are planning to pass an "anti-chewing" law in the near future.
Humanity has always chewed something. Thus, Native Americans chewed a mixture of wool and honey to strengthen their teeth, Europeans after Columbus's discovery of America accustomed their teeth to tobacco, and Americans themselves to spruce resin, which became the prototype of modern chewing gums. In 1869, the first patent for making chewing gum was obtained in the USA, which in less than 100 years became one of the most widespread food products in the world, an integral part of mass culture, and also a "headache" for street cleaners worldwide.
The first state to begin fighting the "urban scourge" of recent decades was Singapore. It was in this small Asian country that the world's first ban on the sale of chewing gum was introduced in 1992. As a result, Singapore's streets, thanks to the impeccable cleanliness that followed, became one of the country's attractions. However, 12 years later, under lobbyist pressure from Americans, the Singaporean authorities lifted their ban. True, now chewing gum is sold only in pharmacies and strictly by doctor's prescription. Also, to buy the former "forbidden fruit", a Singaporean resident must present the seller with an ID card and a card with their ID number. If a pharmacist sells gum illegally, they face a 2-year prison sentence and a fine of $3,000.
China took up the chewing gum problem in 2002, when during the National Day holiday tourists spat out no less than 600,000 pieces of gum on Beijing's main square, Tiananmen. Cleaning the square then cost the city $120,000. After that, China's Ministry of Science and Technology ordered Chinese scientists to develop a chemical that dissolves chewing gum, which would ease the work of street sweepers in cleaning cities and reduce the costs of such an ungrateful task. The chemical was invented, but the number of gum pieces on Chinese streets did not decrease. The PRC government, finally realizing that not only tourists but also the Chinese themselves, who consume 2 billion pieces of gum annually, are to blame for the contamination of cities with chewing gum, passed a law according to which spitting out gum in a public place incurs a fine of up to 50 yuan (about $6).
In Europe, they decided to fight this evil in their own way. In February of this year, British legislators recognized chewing gum as one of the main "enemies" of city streets and set about educating negligent fellow citizens. Utility workers calculated that there are 20 discarded chewing gum pellets per square meter of every London street. Almost £160 million ($300 million) is spent annually on cleaning gum from sidewalks. To recoup the money spent on cleaning cities, officials introduced a tax on sales of this product. From now on, one penny is charged on each pack of gum for street cleaning, and on wrappers, gum manufacturers remind buyers of the existence of trash bins. And in the center of every British city, posters with portraits of famous people and cartoon TV characters are already hung, urging residents to stick used gum directly onto them.