Buttercrane Spearhead New Recycling Initiative

An innovative Gum Recycling initiative will be launched at Buttercrane Shopping Centre tomorrow, Saturday 25 August from 11am - 4pm. There will be live music, street art, giveaways and lots more. Buttercrane is the first commercial premises in Northern Ireland to launch the initiative.

Discarded chewing gum leaves ugly white splodges on pavements and costs £100,000’s every year to clean.

In an effort to tackle the sticky mess and encourage customers to recycle their gum, Buttercrane Shopping Centre in Newry, has installed fun new Pink GUMDROP Bins so customers can dispose of chewing gum responsibly.

Peter Murray Centre Manager says: “Business spend  hundreds of thousands of pounds annually to get rid of chewing gum on pavements. Based on just 1% of Buttercrane customers dropping gum, the annual clean-up is estimated at some £13k. It’s ugly and messy and as a centre we invest significantly in cleansing to make sure the Centre is clean and welcoming.

“We’ve embraced recycling in other aspects of our business and when I discovered the products designed by GUMDROP Ltd, I was keen to do explore this from an environmental and business perspective.

“It offers unique approach to improve the street environment around the centre. I believe we’re the first commercial premise to install GUMDROPS in NI and I’d hope to see others follow suit.”

Buttercrane have installed several bright pink GUMDROPS receptacles at all entrance points to the centre and are supporting the initiative with an educational and social media campaign to raise awareness of the cost of throwing away gum.

THE GUMDROP Bins are the brainchild of Anna Bullus and were first launched in 2009 to tackle the global problem of chewing gum litter.

Gumdrop Ltd is the first company in the world to recycle and process chewing gum into a range of new compounds that can be used in the rubber and plastics industry.

The GUMDROP Bin and its contents are all recycled into a range of products including Wellington Boots, Stationary, Packaging, Mobile Phone covers among many other applications.