Wolverhampton Council gets a £20,000 grant to rid the streets of chewing gum
Plans are being put in place to rid the streets of Wolverhampton of chewing gum after the city council was granted more than £20,000.
Wolverhampton Council is one of 52 across the country that have successfully applied to the Chewing Gum Task Force, now in its fourth year, for funds to clean gum off pavements and prevent it from being littered again, with the council receiving £20,155.
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.
The Task Force is funded by major gum manufacturers including Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle, with an investme
Monitoring and evaluation carried out by Behaviour Change, a not-for-profit social enterprise, has shown that in areas that benefitted from the first and second year of funding, a reduced rate of gum littering of up to 80 per cent was seen in the first two months.
It also showed that 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.
Councillor Bhupinder Gakhal, cabinet member for resident services at Wolverhampton Council, said: “We are very pleased to receive this funding through the Chewing Gum Task Force which will be used to make a real difference to the city’s streets.
“Thoughtlessly discarded gum is unpleasant, unsightly and unacceptable. It has a negative effect on the local environment and is very difficult to remove.
"Our Street Scene teams work tirelessly to make our streets welcoming to residents and visitors alike and this extra funding will boost their efforts in tackling the problem of thoughtlessly discarded gum.”
In its third year, the Task Force awarded 54 councils grants worth a total of £1.585 million, helping clean an estimated 500,000m2 of pavements.
Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, Keep Britain Tidy’s chief executive, said: “Chewing gum continues to be an unsightly form of litter in our public spaces though, thankfully, the scheme is leading to significant reductions.
“People need to remember that disposing irresponsibly of their gum causes harm to our environment as it takes years to decompose naturally and, ultimately, costs the public purse to clean it up.”
