Action to remove the chewing gum blighting streets in Westmorland and Furness is moving full steam ahead thanks to a £27,500 grant to tackle the issue.
Westmorland and Furness Council is one of 54 across the country that have successfully applied to the Chewing Gum Task Force, now in its third 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 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 grant has funded a Maxvac MV7000 Gladiator gum remover and associated activity to clean up streets around Westmorland and Furness.
The first areas to be targeted will be The Glebe at Bowness and areas in Barrow, including Dalkeith Street and Cavendish Street, as well as outside the shops in Ormsgill and Lesh Lane.
Councillor Giles Archibald, Portfolio Holder for Climate, Biodiversity and Environmental Services, said: “This funding is very welcome and I look forward to seeing it used to make a visible difference in our communities. Our Street Scene teams work tirelessly to help make our towns and villages great places to be and this extra support to tackle the sticky problem will make a significant contribution to their efforts.”
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 per cent in the first two months.
Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, Keep Britain Tidy’s chief executive, said: “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.
“However, once the gum has been cleaned up, it is vital to remind the public that when it comes to litter, whether it’s gum or anything else, there is only one place it should be – in the bin – and that is why the behaviour change element of the task force’s work is so important.”
The Chewing Gum Task Force brings together some of the UK’s major chewing gum producers (Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle) in a new partnership to remove gum litter from UK high streets and prevent future littering. The scheme, administered by independent charity Keep Britain Tidy, sees the chewing gum firms invest up to £10 million over five years to achieve two objectives; cleaning up historic gum staining and changing behaviour so that more people bin their gum.
In the two years of the scheme, specially designed signage to encourage people to bin their gum, combined with targeted street cleaning by the participating councils, achieved reductions in gum littering of between 60% and 80% in the first two months. Less gum litter was still being observed six months after clean-ups and the use of prevention materials.
Behaviour Change is a not-for-profit social enterprise, founded in 2009. They create social and environmental change, with big ideas grounded in behavioural science. Through a five-year innovation programme and collaboration with chewing gum manufacturer Mars Wrigley, they created and tested a range of ways to encourage responsible behaviour, which resulted in local reductions of gum littering by up to 64 per cent. These interventions have now been made available for deployment by councils as part of the Gum Task Force Grant Scheme.
Click here to find out more about Behaviour Change.
Keep Britain Tidy is a leading environmental charity. We set the standard for the management of parks and beaches, inspire people to be litter-free, to waste less and live more sustainably. We run campaigns and programmes including the Great British Spring Clean, Eco-Schools, Love Parks, the Green Flag Award for parks and green spaces and the Blue Flag/ Seaside Awards for beaches.