• CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    14 hours ago

    Isn’t gum really bad for the environment? Like the rubber part decomposes but the plastic part just doesn’t? Not saying pacifiers aren’t plastic and rubber, but they’re reusable at least

      • Collatz_problem [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        13 hours ago

        Everything is made from rubber and plastic now. Bread? Plastic. Meat? Rubber. Vegetables? Plastic. Milk? Rubber. Chewing gum looks like rubber, but is actually plastic.

      • TiredTiger@lemmy.ml
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        13 hours ago

        It is plastic, though. The exact formulas tend to be proprietary, but they use a plastic rather than a natural gum base unless explicitly stated otherwise on the packaging. Even a lot of the ‘natural’ brands still use a plastic base.

      • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        12 hours ago

        A podcast years ago. A cursory search confirms that modern chewing gum has a “gum base” that contains food safe plastic polymer. Old school ones are made from gum from trees, but that hasn’t been economically viable for like a century.

        Most of it will decompose but other parts either gets buried in a landfill or gets burned where the smoke goes into the sky and turns into stars.