Council awarded funding to help tackle unsightly gum problem

Derry City and Strabane District Council is putting plans in place to remove the chewing gum that blights local streets after receiving a grant of £27,500 to tackle the issue.

The council is one of 52 local authorities 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.

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 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.

Welcoming the support, Mayor of Derry City and Strabane District, Councillor Ruairí McHugh, said: “Gum poses major problems for local authorities as it’s so hard to remove and is particularly unsightly.

"So much effort goes into maintaining our public spaces and this just adds to the pressures on our streetscape teams to keep the city looking well. I am delighted to see this initiative which will help ensure our public spaces remain clean and welcoming for everyone.”

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.

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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.”