Spotlight on Heckmondwike as funding awarded to rid chewing gum litter off streets
Kirklees Council has awarded more funding to remove chewing gum litter from its streets.
The council is putting plans in place to remove chewing gum that blights local streets after receiving a further £26,450 of funding to tackle the issue.
Last year, 16,503 pieces of gum litter were removed from streets in Dewsbury and Huddersfield, and this year the spotlight will be on Heckmondwike and Marsden.
The council has exciting town centre regeneration plans for Heckmondwike and this latest funding will be used for a one-off deep cleanse around the town centre, complementing the bus station development works.
Funding will also be used to clear up chewing gum litter in Marsden town centre and the train station.
Coun Tyler Hawkins, Cabinet Member for Highways and Waste said: “We are delighted to have been awarded further funding to help us tackle the problem of gum litter across our towns and villages in Kirklees.
“Removing chewing gum litter will get these areas looking their best and complement our ongoing programme of regeneration work within our town centres.
“With this clean up and new signage, we hope that it will make potential litter bugs think twice and help keep our home tidy”.
The 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.
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 investment of up to £10 million spread over five years.
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.”
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 per cent of England’s streets and 99 per cent of retail sites are stained with 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.