The half-life of chewing gum

I was in a long car trip the other day chewing on gum and wondering to myself if chewy gum is biodegradable. I like to think so as then I feel comfortable in spitting it out the window. I am strongly against littering and would never throw trash out the window unless it was food like an apple core that I know would quickly degrade outside and only if I was on a highway. I rarely go wild and hit the streets throwing apple cores at random pedestrians in town!

So I'm in two minds about chewing gum. On one hand I'm lead to believe that it does break down. Sometimes you can chew on a piece of gum for what seems like forever and it's still a chewy mass with no sign of breaking down - but I can tell you first hand that if you're dumb enough not to spit the damn thing out after a couple hours of it tasting like a wet wad of kitchen paper, then it eventually liquefies! I've been stuck in a church service before chewing on a piece of gum - I really wanted to spit it out but had no where to put it and didn't want to walk out in the middle of the sermon as I felt that would be rude. So eventually the damn thing liquefied in my mouth and I was no longer chewing but trying not to swallow/gag on this awful liquid that was occupying half my mouth while waiting for the sermon to finish. Well, you may have noticed on the back of some chewing gum it says "Excess consumption may cause a laxative effect" - they weren't kidding about that and I ended up decidedly power-walking my ass as quickly outta there mid-way through the sermon after all - heading straight for the gents!

So getting back to the point, that experience suggested that gum does break down. But on the other hand, having done my share of helping move pews and tables around at church events I am all too familiar with the feel of gum lodged under a table/seat - you feel something under your fingers that just doesn't feel consistent with the rest of the table so you feel around some more until you realise you're fondling a ball of pre-chewed gum! Thankfully, I've rarely stumbled across a "fresh" one that was still moist, which leads me to my next point - that most of them were petrified! Those things were so rock hard that I swear you couldn't chip 'em off with a jack hammer!

So maybe it all depends on the right environmental conditions for it to either break down or remain solid. I guess I'll continue to spit them out the car window along the highway either way. They'll either break down from the sun & rain and all will be well with the world OR they'll fossilise trapping some of my saliva and leaving a chance of scientists thousands of years in the future finding it and being able to extract my DNA and bring me back to life! No doubt on a remote island theme park the future scientists would create a whole bunch of me but make me all girls so none of us could do it and get each other preggers in the wild (we'd all be lesbians - sweet!).  ...but life would find a way. <queue the Jurassic Park theme music> Dah daaah, dah daaaah, dah dah daaah dah dah dah daaaaah....