New funding will help Council tackle the sticky issue of chewing gum

Cheshire West and Chester Council has successfully obtained a grant from the Chewing Gum Task Force, administered by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, to help clean up gum and reduce gum littering.

The Council today announced ambitious plans to remove the chewing gum that blights local streets after receiving a £26,500 grant to tackle the issue. 

The Council is one of 50 across the country that have successfully applied to the Chewing Gum Task Force, now in its fifth year, for funds to clean gum off pavements and prevent it from being littered in the first place. 

The Chewing Gum Task Force grant scheme – established by Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and run by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy – 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 it 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. 

In the past four years, the Task Force has awarded grants worth a total of £6.46 million, funded the cleaning of over 4.15 million square metres of pavements. 

Monitoring and evaluation carried out by Behaviour Change – a not-for-profit social enterprise – has shown that in areas that benefitted from funding, a reduced rate of gum littering of up to 86% was seen in the first two months. 

Reductions were still being observed six months after targeted street cleansing and the installation of specially designed signage to encourage people to bin their gum. 

The Council’s Cabinet Member for Community Safety and Neighbourhood Pride, Councillor Stuart Bingham said:

“Chewing gum litter might seem like a small issue, but it has a big impact on how our streets look and how people feel about their neighbourhoods.

“This funding gives us the opportunity to tackle the problem head-on – removing the stains we can already see and taking action to stop more building up in the future. But lasting change depends on all of us. By making the simple choice to bin your gum, you’re helping to keep our streets clean, welcoming and something we can all take pride in.”

According to Keep Britain Tidy, around 77% of England’s streets and 99% of retail sites are stained with gum. 

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

“While chewing gum litter remains a stubborn eyesore in our public spaces, the good news is that this scheme is already driving major improvements.   

“As an environmental charity, we know that every piece of gum dropped irresponsibly damages the environment, taking years to break down naturally, while also leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for costly clean-up operations.  

“Everyone in west Cheshire can play a part in creating cleaner, greener streets for all by binning their gum properly.” 

The Chewing Gum Task Force: 

The Chewing Gum Task Force brings together some of the UK’s major chewing gum producers (Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle) in a 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.   

Behaviour Change: 

www.behaviourchange.org.uk 

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 5-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%. These interventions have now been made available for deployment by councils as part of the Gum Task Force Grant Scheme.

Intervention toolkit: 

www.tacklegumlittering.co.uk 

 Keep Britain Tidy 

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 Week, Buy Nothing New Month, Eco-Schools, the Green Flag Award for parks and green spaces, the Blue Flag/ Seaside Awards for beaches and blue spaces, and the Green Key for sustainable tourism and hospitality.

To find out more about Keep Britain Tidy, our campaigns and programmes visit: 

www.keepbritaintidy.org