趣味口香糖回收站
Playful Gumdrop Bins Help Reduce Sticky Gum Litter And Give It A Second Life
趣味口香糖回收站
Most people have a love-hate relationship with gum. For delicious as it is, the sticky tasteless waste that remains is not just annoying especially when inadvertently stepped upon, but also, harmful to the environment. That's because the primary ingredient in most modern chewing gums is synthetic rubber which is not biodegradable. With an estimated 560,000 tons of gum being chewed each year, this adds a lot of unwanted polymer to our already overwhelmed landfills. Now thanks to Gumdrop Ltd., there may be a solution to this sticky problem.
好多人對口香糖又愛又恨。雖然口香糖嚼起來很棒，嚼剩下的渣卻令人生厭，特別是當你無意間踩上的時候。不僅如此，口香糖渣還有害環境，這是因爲現在口香糖的主要原料是不可降解的合成膠。據估計，人們一年大概消耗56萬噸口香糖，給本就難以處理的垃圾填埋工程添加了不少壓力。現在Gumdrop有限公司似乎找到了解決辦法。
The U.K. based company has come up with a brilliant idea that enables easy disposal of chewed gum using specialized recycling bins. Passersby can simply dump any unwanted chewing gum into the bright pink gumdrop-like receptacles that have been installed across the city of London.
這個英國公司找到了輕鬆處理口香糖渣的好方法——運用特殊的回收箱。現在，在倫敦大街小巷都裝了這種亮粉色軟糖式的回收箱，路人可以把任何口香糖渣輕鬆投進去。
Once full, they are mailed to Gumdrop headquarters where the gum is recycled to create - yup you guessed it - more receptacles! The company says that the gum waste can be transformed into other useful things like rubber boots and phone cases as well.
填滿的回收箱將被送回Gumdrop總部，你能想象出它們被加工成什麼了嗎？是更多的回收箱！該公司表示，口香糖渣還可以轉化爲其他可用的東西，比如橡膠鞋或電話箱。
Though the pink bins clearly indicate that they are meant for gum recycling, there is always the risk that people will use them to get rid of all kinds of trash. To ensure that it is just gum that gets recycled, the company has devised a special system that extracts any foreign items that have been mixed in.
雖然粉紅色回收箱上明確標註了只用來回收口香糖，也還是有被投入其他垃圾的風險。爲了解決這個問題，Gumdrop公司發明了可以篩除其他垃圾的系統。
Anna Bullus, who founded the company in 2009, says she was inspired to create the clever receptacles after observing the sticky mess caused by gum waste on the streets of London. To test if people would be willing to dispose of gum responsibly, she set up two bins inside a men's restroom at Southampton Airport about 80 miles northeast of London. It was extremely successful! Bullus says they had to pick up the full receptacles just five times a year, an endeavor that cost the company $300 USD.
Anna Bullus在2009年創建了該公司。據她講，她是在倫敦大街上看到這些黏黏的口香糖垃圾後才受啓發決定開發這種智能回收站的。爲了試驗人們是否自願把口香糖渣投入垃圾桶，她專門在位於距離倫敦80公里東北部的Southampton機場的男衛生間裏設置了兩個這種回收站。事實證明非常成功! Bullus說他們公司每年只需要取5次被裝滿的回收站，僅需要花費300美元的成本。
譯文屬原創，未經允許，不得轉載。
