Newham Council is among the first councils to be awarded funding from The Chewing Gum Task Force grant scheme; a brand-new fund to help clean chewing gum from the UK’s towns and cities.
The Chewing Gum Task Force was established by Defra and is run by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy. The funding recently announced is the first tranche of a package worth up to £10 million from major gum manufacturers including Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle to tackle chewing gum stains – the investment will be spread over five years.
The funding will be used to purchase equipment to carry out deep cleaning to remove chewing gum stains from Newham’s streets, and install new signage to encourage people to bin their gum in future.
Previous pilots run by Mars Wrigley and not-for-profit Behaviour Change using this signage have reduced gum littering by up to 64%.
Cleansing will get underway this October in East Ham before rolling out to other areas of the borough.
Councillor James Asser, Cabinet Member for Environment and Sustainable Transport said:
“We’re delighted to have received this funding from The Chewing Gum Task Force, which will help us tackle the ongoing problem of chewing gum staining in our high streets and public spaces.
“Residents have made it clear to us that what they want to see is a cleaner, smarter borough.
“We are already undertaking a lot of action to tackle fly tipping and have recently enhanced our enforcement team to tackle day-to-day litter which includes dropping chewing gum. We are issuing fixed penalty notices of £150 to anyone who drops gum on our streets as its costs money to clean it up which could be spent on other services for residents.
“This grant will allow us to clean the streets, discourage people from dropping gum with new signage placed in high streets, and if they continue to drop gum on the streets they will be fined.”
Around 87% of England’s streets are stained with gum, according to Keep Britain Tidy, and the estimated costs to councils is around £7million each year. The Chewing Gum Task Force grant fund represents a commitment from the Government and major gum manufacturers to work together to find long-term solutions to this issue.
The grant of £70,000 was jointly awarded to Newham and Redbridge Councils.
As part of building a fairer Newham we will spend £40 million over the next 4 years to keep our streets and neighbourhoods clean and cut reported fly-tipping by 50 percent.