The first shoe made from recycled gum

The gumshoe: A product we created from recycled gum from the streets of Amsterdam to create awareness about chewing gum litter.

Traditional campaigns that used to run about littering didn’t achieve their goals, and first and foremost didn’t reach the target audience. We grabbed their attention with something they already love: sneakers. In addition to increasing awareness, this also created sympathy and genuine motivation to solve the chewing gum problem together. By combining their interest with the problem and presenting a visually pleasing and very shareable item, we let the mouth-to-mouth communication, PR and social media do the rest. Through national and international media (blogs, social media, websites, TV shows) we reached more than 600.000.000 unique visitors and are still counting. From Germany to Ukraine and from China to the US people heard about Gumshoe. Renowned websites wrote articles and influencers shared it online. Within the first days our website got flooded with pre-orders. Even chewing gum brand Sportlife reached out to help which resulted in an outdoor campaign addressing gum litter.

To make people aware of this problem we needed to come up with a unique solution. We discovered gum is made from a synthetic rubber. What makes it a suitable material to manufacture new products. By collecting gum from all over Amsterdam we turned this useless waste into something useful. We created a product people actually want from something no one cares about. We created the Gumshoe, the first shoe made from recycled gum. Next to that we placed gum recycling bins at schools to prevent gum litter around these areas and prevent high cleaning costs. This gum is used in new Gumshoes.

One of the main brand values of Amsterdam is to keep the city beautiful and clean. Gum is the second most common litter after cigarettes. Throwing gum on the street isn’t seen as a serious problem. Every year about 1.5 million kilos of chewing gum finds its way on to the streets of the Netherlands. It takes 20 to 25 years before chewing gum is completely gone and cleaning the gum costs Dutch municipalities millions of euros. In the meantime many animals suffocate trying to eat this waste. How can we make youngsters, the biggest chewing gum users, aware of this problem without being preachy?

JURY FEEDBACK

PRODUCT / BRONZE

A brilliant idea with an inspiring, social and responsible approach.