£1.2m awarded to local authorities to help reduce gum litter

Environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy today announced the 54 councils that will receive a share of more than £1.2 million in grants to clean up chewing gum stains from streets, in addition to signage to stop littering from happening in the first place. 

Bristol, Walsall, Sunderland and Bury will all benefit from the third round of funding from the Chewing Gum Task Force. 

Estimates suggest that councils spend around £7 million cleaning up littered gum and, according to Keep Britain Tidy, around 77% of England’s streets and 99% of retail sites are stained by it. 

Launched in 2021, the Chewing Gum Task Force was established by Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and is administered by Keep Britain Tidy, with funding provided by gum producers.  

It aims to help councils clean gum off pavements and put in measures to stop it being dropped in the first place.  

The Chewing Gum Task Force brings together some of the country’s major chewing gum producers, including Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle. Together, the producers have pledged up to £10 million over five years via the scheme to tackle gum littering. 

The latest round of funding will provide grants of up to £27,500 for cleansing or the purchasing cleaning equipment alongside a fully funded bespoke gum litter prevention package. 

In its first two years (2022 & 2023), the task force awarded grants totalling approximately £2.5 million to almost 100 councils across the UK. 

Monitoring and evaluation carried out by Behaviour Change – a not-for-profit social enterprise – found participating councils achieved reductions in gum littering of between 60% and 80% in the first two months. Councils reported cleaning an estimated 440,000 m2 of pavements, the same area as the entire Vatican City, and 100% of councils reported that their grant enabled them to effectively tackle gum litter. 

Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, Keep Britain Tidy’s Chief Executive, said: “Gum litter makes streets look dirty and uncared for. 

“Our own research shows three quarters of sites we surveyed are blighted by chewing gum staining, and we know that cleaning it up costs councils – and therefore council tax-payers - millions of pounds. 

“That’s why we are delighted to be administering the third wave of this much-needed support for councils provided by the Chewing Gum Task Force.” 

Naomi Jones, corporate affairs director at Mars Wrigley UK, said: “Mars Wrigley is proud to invest in litter prevention and education. The Task Force has already made significant progress, supporting almost 100 councils and cleaning nearly 3 million square meters of streets." 

Hayley Osborne, Communications & Sustainability Manager at Perfetti Van Melle, said: "We're witnessing positive changes in our streets and citizen behaviour. We're excited to build on these successes in year three.”  

In 2023, a full, independent evaluation of the scheme was carried out in four councils – Antrim & Newtownabbey, Cardiff, Doncaster and Glasgow. This showed that, as a result of the street cleansing and subsequent prevention campaign, gum littering reductions of up to 60% were achieved. 

In Leeds, a pavement coating was trialled that is designed to make it easier to clean – and sites were monitored to assess its effectiveness. While the standard intervention saw a 16% reduction in gum littering, the areas where the pavement coating had been applied saw a 31% reduction, indicating the coating was successful at helping prevent gum litter from sticking to the pavements.