Bonsaï, an organic chewing gum guaranteed without plastic
Bonsaï is a chewing gum made from sapodilla gum from a sustainable extraction process, flavored with natural aromas.
When you chew your favorite gum (excluding Bonsai), you are actually chewing plastic.
With one chewing gum consumed on average per person per day, the French are the biggest consumers of chewing gum in Europe, second in the world behind the Americans. However, you should know that industrial chewing gum contains synthetic polymers (plastics), resulting from petroleum refining.
Why oil in chewing gum? During the 20th century, American manufacturers began to replace the sapodilla sap, traditionally used in chewing gum, with an artificial gum base, which was cheaper to produce. In order to mimic the elasticity of sapodilla resin, manufacturers had to add polymers to their new recipe.
Once consumed, industrial chewing gum is a major source of pollution.
Bonsai chewing gums are different because they are plastic-free, with a composition based on natural gum.
But for all plastic-based industrial chewing gum, this poses major pollution problems .
The environmental impact of the exploitation of oil is known, and the consumer can legitimately wonder about the possible consequences on health of a daily consumption of plastic-based food products.
Moreover, once consumed, these industrial chewing gums are a major source of pollution. To remove chewing gum that has been crushed on sidewalks, city officials often use powerful jets of water. The chewing gums are then evacuated in the sewers, and eventually reach the rivers, rivers and seas, polluting the waterways.
Even thrown in the trash and buried with our household waste, industrial chewing gum pollutes our land by decomposing, over several years, into microplastics, which will be ingested by insects, animals and plants, and will end up on our plates. .
Bonsai is a composition based on natural gum
The sapodilla tree is a fruit tree whose sap is exceptionally elastic. For millennia, Native Americans have extracted the resin from this tree and chewed it to clean their teeth and sweeten their breath. At Bonsaï, we work with local artisans who make small cuts in the bark of trees to collect the sap. This extraction process respects the forest because no trees are felled during this process, and the trees are given time to regenerate before carrying out new sap extractions. Once reworked, this natural gum has a consistency identical to that of conventional industrial chewing gum.
Then, the sapodilla gum is flavored with natural mint flavors: spearmint, peppermint and field mint. This natural gum base is then sweetened with xylitol, a natural sweetener extracted from birch bark.
The chewing gum is then packaged in an FSC-certified recyclable cardboard box, wrapped in a transparent biodegradable film made from vegetable cellulose.
Composed entirely of organic matter, Bonsai chewing gum is naturally biodegradable and non-polluting, for a chew that leaves no traces.