Established by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and run by environmental charity, Keep Britain Tidy, the Chewing Gum Task Force is a new fund aimed at helping authorities clean chewing gum from the UK’s towns and cities. 

South Lanarkshire is among the first councils - and one of four in Scotland - to benefit from the earliest tranche of funding announcements from a package worth up to £10 million, directly funded by major gum manufacturers. 

The £20,000 boost will allow the council to carry out deep cleaning to remove chewing gum stains from the authority’s streets, and to install new signage to encourage people to bin their gum in the future.

Previous pilots run by Mars Wrigley and the not-for-profit group, Behaviour Change, using this signage have reduced gum littering by up to *64%. 

Councillor Robert Brown, Chair of the Community and Enterprise Resources committee, said: “We’re delighted to have received this funding from the Chewing Gum Task Force, which will help us tackle the ongoing problem of gum staining, especially in our town centres and public spaces. 

“We have already made a firm commitment to tackling the wider issue of litter and the blight it has on communities and this very specialist, and welcome, funding will mean we can make an immediate start with this stickiest of problems.” 

The targeted funding will also enable the council to regularly use four specialist chewing gum removal machines, bought by Grounds Services and Economic Development earlier this year.

The Ecogum Emax-E - as demonstrated above by Councillor Brown and Sharon Montgomery of the litter team - is a backpack machine that runs entirely on a battery and dispenses a natural, pH-neutral detergent that removes the gum when heated. 

Between now and the end of the summer season, the machines will be deployed daily in areas identified by the team under the new initiative.

According to Keep Britain Tidy, the estimated costs to councils UK-wide of removing chewing gum is around £7m each year, and the new fund represents a commitment from Government and major gum manufacturers to work together to find long-term solutions.

Forty-four UK and NI councils will receive a total of £1.25 million in funding this summer; South Lanarkshire, North Lanarkshire, Glasgow, and the Shetland Islands are the first Scottish recipients.

*Estimates from a Keep Britain Tidy litter survey published in 2019.