FLINTSHIRE Council has been awarded a grant from the Chewing Gum Task Force to remove gum litter from the streets and prevent it being dropped in the future.
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.
Grants of up to £27,500 will be received by councils in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales towards the purchase of cleaning equipment and/or street cleansing this year, marking a 10 per cent increase on the amounts available last year.
The grants are supplemented by fully-funded gum litter prevention packages for each council, including targeted behaviour change signage and advice, designed and produced by social enterprise Behaviour Change.
By combining targeted street cleansing with specially designed signage to encourage people to bin their gum, participating councils have seen reductions in gum littering of up to 80 per cent in the first two months, with a reduced rate of gum littering still being observed after six months.
Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, Chief Executive of Keep Britain Tidy, said: “After a second highly successful year of tackling gum littering, I am delighted that we are able to continue to support councils through a third year of grant awards and encourage communities to take pride in their local areas by keeping their streets clean.
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“Gum is an unsightly form of litter in our public spaces that causes harm to our environment as it takes years to decompose naturally – and, ultimately, costs the taxpayer to clean it up.”
Last year 55 councils across the UK benefitted from the special grant fund, helping clean an area equivalent to the size of the Vatican City, with funding totalling £1.65m.
This is the third year of the scheme and Flintshire has been selected to receive funding to support the cause.
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