Once all chewing
gum was made from chicle. That's the sap of the sapodilla tree,
which grows in rainforest in Central America.
Men
called "chicleros" climb up the tall trees, and with
their machetes, cut criss-crosses in the trunks so that the sticky
sap flowed out. Then the chicle was processed and turned into
gum.
Today, most
chewing gum is made from synthetic stuff, but the gum base in
this kit includes real chicle. So now, chicleros have a reason
to harvest the chicle once again and protect their trees.
For more information
on sapodilla trees visit:
sapodilla
trees or chicle.
Eduardo is a chiclero. That means that he taps
Sapodilla trees and collects the sap from them. That sap is called
chicle, and it’s the stuff that used to be used all the time to
make chewing gum. Nowadays, the gum we buy in stores is made from
chemicals and synthetic gum bases, not chicle. That means that
there is less work for people like Eduardo.
He lives in the Northern part of Guatemala,
in an area called the Peten, which is a rain forest. It’s hard
to imagine how different life is there from life in the United
States, but you can get an idea by thinking about the rain forest,
filled with loads of different kinds of birds, animals, and trees.
Because it rains so much, everything grows very quickly and there
are plants everywhere. It is very beautiful with all sorts of
different colors and sounds.
The problem with living in a rain forest is
that it is difficult to make a living there, and it’s hard to
get around because there are only really bumpy dirt roads, and
only a few of them. There are not many jobs, and many people are
very, very poor. They chop down the trees in the forest to make
gardens to grow some food, and some of them chop down the trees
to sell for lumber. And, pretty soon, if all that chopping continues,
there won’t be a forest left at all.
The Sapodilla trees grow wild in the rain forest,
and in order to get the chicle, chicleros tap them every 4 or
5 years; they do not chop them down. If more people chew gum made
out of chicle, like in THE GUM KIT, the people who live there
would have a real reason not to cut down trees. It would make
more sense to protect the trees, and tap them for the chicle they
produce.
So that is where THE GUM KIT comes in: The
more gum you chew made from chicle, the more you help keep Eduardo
employed in protecting the rain forest. The whole world thanks
you!!!
Want to learn more?
