Wakefield Council tackles sticky Pontefract streets thanks to gum grant
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
Wakefield Council is getting stuck into tackling a chewing gum problem after receiving a £16,344 grant to help deal with the sticky issue.
“I’m grateful that this grant has helped us to clean up some of the streets that have been worst affected by discarded gum.
“Ideally, we wouldn’t need to clean it up in the first place, so let’s work together to stop the issue at its root. Everyone should throw their rubbish and used chewing gum in the bin.”
Cllr Jack Hemingway
Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change
Work is underway to clean up pedestrian areas in Pontefract that have been stained by dropped chewing gum.
And the cleaning process will continue in Wakefield and towns across the district.
The Council is one of 54 across the country that successfully applied to the Chewing Gum Task Force for funds to clean gum off pavements and prevent it from being littered again.
Wakefield Council has spent the money on new equipment to help tackle the problem.
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.
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.”
Now in its third year, 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% of England’s streets and 99% 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 Vatican City.
By combining targeted street cleaning with special signage to encourage people to bin their gum, participating councils achieved reductions in gum littering of up to 60% in the first two months.