The Council has announced the completion of its work to remove the chewing gum staining in high footfall pedestrian areas in Hoddesdon town centre after receiving a £24,200 grant to tackle the issue.
Earlier this year, Broxbourne Council was one of 52 location authorities across the country that successfully applied to the Chewing Gum Task Force for funds to clean gum off pavements and prevent further gum littering.
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 the clean-up and installation of prevention materials.
Councillor Jim Clune, Cabinet Member for Environment and Community Safety said:
This has been a great opportunity for the Council to restore the streets of Hoddesdon town centre, a much-valued location in the Borough that often hosts community events and is a great hit amongst visitors.
The Council has been hard at work with this cleansing exercise, but also with publicity to help educate about the detriment of gum pollution. I do hope that following such great results, members of the public will feel inspired to help keep our local streets free of gum litter.
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.
A spokesperson for Keep Britain Tidy 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 costs the public purse to clean it up.
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.