Are a bunch of blue crystals the answer to the nagging problem of gum stuck to sidewalks and the bottom of shoes?

A U.K.-based company thinks so, and it’s trying to get companies, including Wrigley, to buy in.Revolymer, a start-up technology company based in Wales, announced Friday that it has developed a non-stick “high-quality” gum that can be easily removed from sidewalks, hair, clothing and shoes and that its product has been approved for sale in the U.S.

The key, developed by researchers at the University of Bristol, is a polymer that resembles blue crystals and helps break down the gum so it can be removed with soap and water.

The company will license its technology to companies such as Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co.  or will manufacture and market the gum next year in the U.S. and elsewhere, Revolymer CEO Roger Pettman told the Tribune.

“We’re talking to the industry as a whole,” he said. “At this time everything is under discussion.”

In development for 4  1/2 years, the gum evolved from research on adhesives technology. “Sometimes when you come out with technology from a completely different area, you don’t have all this ‘that does and doesn’t work’ [talk],” Pettman said. “It’s a very pleasant-tasting chewing gum, which is not hard or brittle. It has the same texture and taste as a variety of commercial gums.”

Wrigley is playing coy, declining to say whether it’s had discussions with Revolymer. The Chicago-based gummaker says it has had its own “significant team” of people at its Goose Island research and development facility working for a few years to make gum less adhesive and more removable.

The sticking point? The thing that keeps gum chewy is what makes it hard to remove.

There’s flavor to consider as well.

Wrigley executives also are concerned that trumpeting a non-stick gum might promote the very behavior that cities want to stymie –  not properly disposing of that chewed-up wad of synthetic latex.

“If you communicate to consumers that hey, this gum doesn’t stick, that communicates to people [that] ‘I can just throw this on the floor and it will just magically disappear,’ ” said Any Pharoah, a Wrigley spokesman. “The solution is people putting their gum in bins.”

However, personal responsibility isn’t dampening Wrigley’s interest in such a product.

“When we have a product that can be used universally and has the core characteristics of gum and it’s also easy to remove, we’ll introduce it,” Pharoah said.

Revolymer said conventional street cleaning removes 70 percent of the degradable gum from sidewalks and the rest can be removed with cold water. The same polymer could also be used to make lipstick, hair gel, paint and certain adhesives easier to remove, a company spokeswoman said.

The company announced the product at a “gum gala” meeting in London Friday called by the mayor of London, who’s trying to rid the city’s sidewalks of chewing gum before the 2012 Olympics