£40,000 a year cost of picking chewing gum off City streets

[dutchman]

Coventry council spends nearly £40,000 a year picking chewing gum off city centre pavements, it has been revealed.



Some 16,000 pieces of discarded gum are collected by council litter pickers in the city centre every year, amounting to nearly 44 separate items per day.

Information released by the council shows that with each piece of gum costing £2 to remove, the clean-up bill to the council is some £36,000 each year.

To rid the city centre of the mess ahead of the Olympics, a campaign urging people to dispose of chewing gum responsibly will be launched in the city centre on Saturday.

Offenders in Coventry already face an £80 fine if caught gum dropping by street patrol officers.

Coun Phil Townshend, Coventry City Council’s Cabinet member for community safety, says it is everyone’s responsibility to bin their gum and take pride in their city.

He said: “It costs on average £2 to remove and clean each piece of gum and at the moment we spend around £36,000 each year in the city centre on this.

“This figure has dropped compared to a few years ago but it is still too high and this money could be better spent elsewhere.

“With the new pedestrian areas such as Broadgate soon to be completed, now is a pertinent time to launch this campaign encouraging people to bin their chewing gum responsibly.

“Encouraging behaviour change is the only long-term and sustainable solution to the problem of littered gum and we are totally committed to tackling this issue but we need people’s help too.”

The Coventry campaign will include advertising around the city centre.

Information will also be handed out about the problems caused by irresponsibly discarded chewing gum.

Two years ago, a similar campaign in which officers monitored 10 hot spots around Broadgate and the Burges in an eight-week period reduced 35 items of discarded chewing gum at Cathedral Lanes to just one, with an average drop of 84 per cent across all 10 sites.

As the Telegraph reported in January, Coventry has become one of 15 Olympic cities to join a national campaign to help make Britain’s streets free of littered gum.

The scheme is being funded by the Chewing Gum Action Group – a joint initiative between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the chewing gum industry and Chartered Institution of Wastes Management - which aims to combat the irresponsible disposal of chewing gum.