Wirral awarded funding to tackle the sticky issue of chewing gum
A grant from the environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy – under the banner of the Chewing Gum Task Force - will help Wirral Council clean up gum from the streets and reduce gum littering.
The council has been successful in a bid for £27,500 to put into action plans to remove the discarded, dried chewing gum that blights local streets.
Wirral is one of 52 authorities across the country that have successfully applied to the Chewing Gum Task Force, now in its fourth year, for funds to clean gum off pavements and prevent it from being littered again.
In Wirral, the funding will be used to purchase the specialist equipment and solutions required for the task and to train and temporarily employ two operatives to carry out the work.
Top of the list for prioritisation of sites to be tackled - as assessed by environmental officers - is Moreton Cross, followed by parts of Pensby Road and Irby Village and, if possible, New Ferry.
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 and second year of funding, a reduced rate of gum littering of up to 80% was seen in the first two months - with reductions still being observed six months after targeted street cleansing and the installation of specially designed signage to encourage people to bin their gum.
It’s not something we should ever take lightly, discarded chewing gum, stuck to pavements and footways in many busy areas, is an issue right across the country as it be very difficult and expensive to clean up effectively.
I’m pleased that Wirral has been successful in securing this funding. It will really help us to clean up what’s already there, and to remind people that the only suitable place to dispose of gum – and any other kind of litter – is in the bin.
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% of England’s streets and 99% of retail sites are stained with gum.
In its third year the Task Force awarded 54 councils grants worth a total of £1.585 million, helping clean an estimated 500,000m2 of pavements.
Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, Keep Britain Tidy’s chief executive, said: “Chewing gum continues to be an unsightly form of litter in our public spaces – though thankfully the scheme is leading to significant reductions. People need to remember that disposing irresponsibly of their gum causes harm to our environment as it takes years to decompose naturally – and, ultimately, costs the public purse to clean it up.”
