Where Does Bubble Gum Actually Come From? | Rewind Factory #01

Where does bubble gum actually come from? In other words: what is gum base made of? This time we rewind a piece of bubble gum — without stopping the camera even once — from the store shelf, back through the factory, and further and further back.

Along the way: why gum base moved away from tree sap, what the stretchy part of a bubble is actually made of, and a rough calculation of how many trees it would take to make a year of Japan's gum base from tree sap today.

This episode's page (experiments to try, explanations, sources): haccha-meccha.com/en/reverse/01

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How we did the math

- Gum made in Japan: 18,700 tonnes in 2025 (Japan Chewing Gum Association)

- Gum base share: 25% (range 20 to 30%)

- Chicle: about 1 kg of sap from a mature tree's first tapping (about half the next time), then 5 or more years of rest (FAO)

- Result: about 23 million trees (7.5 to 45 million, depending on the assumptions)

- Street trees in Japan, excluding highways: about 6.29 million. Adding highway trees (about 9.44 million): about 15.7 million (March 2022, NILIM)

- The route in this video is one example. It changes with the type of gum and with where its materials are made.

The full source list is on the episode page.

Subscribe: youtube.com/@tamelabo_jp

Reconstructed imagery and animation: Tamelabo.

Photos (adjusted for color, brightness, depth and motion; text blurred where needed):

- Wellhead: Wellhead Bohrlochkopf.JPG / HartmannValves / CC BY 3.0 / commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wellhead_Bohrlochkopf.JPG / creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

- Sapodilla leaves and branches, Mexico: Manilkara zapota 236383778.jpg / Isaac Chacón / CC BY 4.0 / commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Manilkara_zapota_236383778.jpg / creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

- Electron micrograph of a tiny alga (shape reference): CSIRO ScienceImage 7202 SEM Coccolithophorid.jpg / CSIRO / CC BY 3.0 / commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CSIRO_ScienceImage_7202_SEM_C… / creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0