Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/06/gumdrop.html
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By gum, that’s clever… I’ll get my coat…
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Have they extracted the pathogens & bacteria? Asking for my germaphobe friend…
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Someone somewhere is going to try and smoke these shoes.
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… psychotropic drug extraction, anyone?
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Would have been nice for 50 € but the full price is 199.00 which kind of makes it expensive sneakers.
Fuck no. Pity.
Something tells me that these are only very abstractly “made from gum” given the kind of chemical processing that is likely done with them.
Well, I guess that’s what you get when you source your materials in the most energy intensive, expensive way possible.
It feels very much like a meaningless stunt. I’m reminded of the sportswear that Adidas (et al) is making with recycled ocean plastic. What I’ve read about ocean plastic is that it’s not very suitable for recycling because of exposure to the elements. Worse, fibers shed from synthetic clothing during washes make up a substantial portion of the plastic in the environment (something like a third overall and more than 70% in waterways and lakes). So that particular project is also rather ironic…
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Well yum, who wouldn’t want that. I predict these nasty fuckers will just be flying off the shelf. Any day now.
The Amsterdammers is one heckova band name!
Everything I know about gum I learned from CFR Title 21 Part 172 Subpart G; but “unspecified mixture of that stuff, plus fillers, flavors, and filth” does not sound like a fun material to start with when trying to get a nice, predictable, polymer outcome.
Probably an interesting challenge, if you have chemists who are into that sort of thing; but not the shortest path to the destination.
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Yeah, on top of varying ingredients and added dirt and debris, there’s also varying amounts of UV exposure, as it bakes on the ground, so there would be extreme variations. I wouldn’t be surprised if the process was such that you could start off with a radically different organic material - like, say, wood - and it would end up the same and/or this makes up only a tiny fraction of the material used to make the rubber for the shoes.
Probably takes a lot of bubblegum to make one pair of shoes. And of course you have to pay people at least minimum wage to chew it.
In reality, I’d suspect they don’t actually use used gum, but instead by the raw stuff from the supply chain. That’d theoretically reduce supplies, driving up prices of chewing gum, reducing its sales and therefore the amount that ends up on the sidewalk, so the ad would still be relevant as an illustration.
Aside from that, these shoes could really use an ad that starts with “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…”
Says the price is €49.99 when I look.
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