North Ayrshire granted money by Chewing Gum Task Force
Gum on pavements costs councils £7million every year
North Ayrshire Council wants to see an end to chewing gum on streets after receiving funding to help keep the area clean.
The local authority welcomed a £9,000 grant from the Chewing Gum Task Force and will now put in place plans to tackle gum being littered on pavements across the community.
The funding programme, now in its third year, aims to clean gum off streets and prevent it from being disposed of in that manner again.
North Ayrshire is one of 54 across the UK that successfully applied for funding from the project.
And Councillor Tony Gurney admits everyone should be doing their part.
He said: “We welcome the funding from the Chewing Gum Task Force, and we will use this to help remove chewing gum and chewing gum staining from various pavements that are an eyesore in North Ayrshire.
“The money will pay for a specialist contractor to deep clean the pavements in question, and also allow us to buy equipment to maintain the cleanliness of the areas.
“Residents will see signs going up soon in the areas that are cleaned to encourage people in the communities to dispose of their chewing gum responsibly going forward.”
Established by Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and run by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, the Chewing Gum Task Force Grant Scheme is open to councils across the UK who wish to clean up gum in their local areas and invest in long-term behaviour change to prevent gum from being dropped in the first place.
The Task Force is funded by major gum manufacturers including Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle, with an investment of up to £10 million spread over five years.
Monitoring and evaluation carried out by Behaviour Change – a not-for-profit social enterprise - has shown that in areas that benefitted from the first year of funding, a reduced rate of gum littering was still being observed six months after clean-up and the installation of prevention materials.
Estimates suggest the annual clean-up cost of chewing gum for councils in the UK is around £7 million and, according to Keep Britain Tidy, around 77 per cent of England’s streets and 99 per cent of retail sites are stained with gum.
In its second year, the task force awarded 55 councils a total of £1.56 million, helping clean an estimated 440,000 m2 of pavement - an area equivalent to the Vatican City.
By combining targeted street cleaning with specially designed signage to encourage people to bin their gum, participating councils achieved reductions in gum littering of up to 60% in the first two months.
Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, Keep Britain Tidy’s chief executive, finished: “Chewing gum litter is highly visible on our high streets and is both difficult and expensive to clean up, so the support for councils provided by the Chewing Gum Task Force and the gum manufacturers is very welcome.”
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