To create awareness about chewing gum litter we created a product people actually want, from something nobody cares about.

Problem

1.5 million kilos of chewing gum is thrown on the streets of the Netherlands. Cleaning costs Dutch municipalities millions of euros every year. It takes 20 to 25 years before chewing gum is completely gone and many animals suffocate in the waste.

Solution

We discovered that gum is made from a synthetic rubber that makes it a suitable material to manufacture new products. So, we collected gum from all over Amsterdam and turned this useless waste into something useful. We created a product people actually want from something no one cares about. Which turned out to be a perfect conversation starter and incentive to make people think about their own behaviour.

Together with the city council and the largest chewing gum manufacturer in the Netherlands we put up recycling bins around schools and created billboards where you could leave your gum behind for recycling.

The collection of the Design Museum in Munich

The Fashion Week in Milan

The Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven

The Design Week in Skopje

The Plastic Promise during ADE

The International Shoe Conference in Belgium

The Design MaterialDistrict in Rotterdam

Summit in San Francisco

Awards

Cannes Lions/ Epica silver and Bronze/Eurobest three time shortlisted/Clio Bronze and three times shortlisted/

ADCN two Bronze lamps/San shortlist/

Relevancy 

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 the 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.