The Chewing Gum Task Force awarded the council a grant of £27,316 to help clean gum off pavements as part of South Lanarkshire’s It’s Your Place campaign.

The council is one of 50 across the country that have successfully applied to the Chewing Gum Task Force, now in its fifth year, for funds to clean gum off pavements and prevent it from being littered 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. 

Executive Director of Community and Enterprise Resources, Kevin Carr, said: “Receiving this external funding for a fifth-year running will allow us to specifically target thoughtlessly discarded chewing gum from our streets and open spaces.

“This removal work will complement our ongoing It’s Your Place campaign to tackle litter and other anti-social behaviour that unfortunately wastes a lot of time and money the council could be using in a far more constructive way.

“The funding will also allow us to target behaviour through ‘bin your gum’ stickers on street bins in the worst affected areas.”

In the past four years, the Task Force has awarded grants worth a total of £6.46 million, funded the cleaning of over 4.15 million square metres of pavements. 

 Monitoring and evaluation carried out by Behaviour Change – a not-for-profit social enterprise – has shown that in areas that benefitted from funding, a reduced rate of gum littering of up to 86% was seen in the first two months. 

Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, Keep Britain Tidy’s Chief Executive, said: “While chewing gum litter remains a stubborn eyesore in our public spaces, the good news is that this scheme is already driving major improvements.  

 “Everyone in South Lanarkshire can play a part in creating cleaner, greener streets for all by binning their gum properly.”