Joint Waste Solutions awarded funding to tackle the sticky issue of chewing gum on Cobham High Street

A grant from the Chewing Gum Task Force, administered by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, will help Elmbridge Borough Council clean up gum and reduce gum littering.

Joint Waste Solutions is putting plans in place to remove the chewing gum that blights local streets after receiving over £9,000 in grant funding to tackle the issue.

The organisation 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.

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% was seen in the first two months - with reductions still being observed six months after targeted street cleansing and the installation of specially designed signage to encourage people to bin their gum.

Councillor Ashley Tilling, Portfolio Holder for Climate Change, Environmental Services and Sustainability, and Chair of the Joint Waste Collection Services Committee, comments:

“I am pleased that this year’s grant funding will be used to give Cobham High Street a thorough deep-clean, restoring its attractiveness for residents and local businesses and providing a boost for the Keep Elmbridge Tidy campaign. Last year the funding was used to deep-clean The Parade in Claygate and Walton Road in Molesey; both these made a significant improvement to the appearance of the pavements, making a visit to shops and businesses more enjoyable.”

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.

In its third year the Task Force over 50 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.”

Find out more about the Chewing Gum Task Force.

Notes to editors

The Chewing Gum Task Force: The Chewing Gum Task Force brings together some of the UK’s major chewing gum producers (Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle) in a partnership to remove gum litter from UK high streets and prevent future littering. The scheme, administered by independent charity Keep Britain Tidy, sees the chewing gum firms invest up to £10 million over five years to achieve two objectives; cleaning up historic gum staining and changing behaviour so that more people bin their gum.  

Behaviour Change:
Behaviour Change is a not-for-profit social enterprise, founded in 2009. They create social and environmental change, with big ideas grounded in behavioural science. Through a 5-year innovation programme and collaboration with chewing gum manufacturer Mars Wrigley, they created and tested a range of ways to encourage responsible behaviour, which resulted in local reductions of gum littering by up to 64%. 

Keep Britain Tidy is a leading environmental charity. We set the standard for the management of parks and beaches, inspire people to be litter-free, to waste less and live more sustainably. We run campaigns and programmes including the Great British Spring Clean, Eco-Schools, Love Parks Week, Buy Nothing New Month, Eco-Schools, the Green Flag Award for parks and green spaces, the Blue Flag/ Seaside Awards for beaches and blue spaces, and the Green Key for sustainable tourism and hospitality. To find out more about the Keep Britain Tidy campaigns and programmes.

Joint Waste Solutions manages recycling and waste services in Elmbridge, Mole Valley, Surrey Heath and Woking. The team oversees a joint recycling, waste and street cleaning contract with Amey, maintaining high quality services and working to increase recycling and reduce waste. Find out more about Joint Waste Solutions. 

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