More news on this interesting topic have been published by confectionery news.com (see link).
Wrigley has filed a patent describing a new degradable gum. The way this is achieved is by formulating the gum base with “block polymers”. The company claims that the resulting product is more easily removed from surfaces such as sidewalks (in 20 seconds a high pressure hot water jet can remove more than 80% of the material)
According to wikipedia:
“Block copolymers comprise two or more homopolymer subunits linked by covalent bonds (4). The union of the homopolymer subunits may require an intermediate non-repeating subunit, known as a junction block. Block copolymers with two or three distinct blocks are called diblock copolymers and triblock copolymers, respectively.”
In this particular patent, the company uses polymers of at least 4 blocks composed of at east 2 different monomer systems.
The articles from confectionerynews.com mentions as well other companies that presented progresses on this controversial field of the chewing gum business (Mondelez, Revolymer, TNO, RSSL, GumLink, Fertin Pharma, University College Cork) . I also posted in the past about those patents and inventions.
Chewing Gum Consultant 