Flintshire County Council completes chewing gum cleaning project

Flintshire County Council has been working to clean up gum and reduce people littering their gum with help from a Chewing Gum Task Force grant, administered by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy.

Flintshire County Council has announced the completion of plans to remove the chewing gum blighting local streets after receiving a £27,500 grant to tackle the issue earlier this year.  The council was one of 54 across the UK 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.

Among the activities cleansing teams carried out over the last few months were removing chewing gums from the pavements and installing the signage.  

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.  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.

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.

Councillor Glyn Banks, Cabinet Member for Streetscene and Transportation said:

“The teams have achieved fantastic results in high-footfall areas of Flint, Mold, Buckley, Broughton, Saltney, Talacre, Ewloe, and Queensferry this year, and in Holywell, Queensferry, and Shotton last year. If successful with future bids, we hope to extend the programme to side streets off the main roads going forward”.

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.

Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, Chief Executive of Keep Britain Tidy, said:

“Thankfully the majority of people who chew gum dispose of it responsibly. But for those who don’t, cleaning gum and the resulting staining it causes off our pavements costs councils millions of pounds every year.

We know this issue won’t be solved overnight, even in areas where the gum has been cleaned up, but we’re confident that with innovation, research and small behaviour changes provided through the Chewing Gum Task Force, together we can tackle this sticky issue.”

By combining targeted street cleaning with specially designed signage to encourage people to bin their gum, participating councils last year achieved reductions in gum littering of up to 60% in the first two months.