A new “Chewing Gum Task Force” has been set up to fight the gum plague on our pavements.
Individual councils across Northern Ireland can apply for grants up to £20,000 to fight the gummy spread, for street cleansing and the purchase of cleaning equipment. Individual councillors will become “Gum Champions” and new staff members may even be employed dedicated to the service.
Councils will also benefit from a bespoke “gum litter prevention package,” including signs targeting behaviour change and advice steering people to bin their bubblegum.
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The newly established task force brings together some of the UK’s big chewing gum producers in a new 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 clean up historic gum staining on the pavement and change attitudes to disposing gum on the ground.
The local authority at Ards and North Down Borough have signed up for the funding, after elected representatives at the council’s recent Environment Committee agreed to fill in the application for full funding.
The council’s Environment report states: “There is a shortfall in the funding for the two additional posts to operate the new public realm deep clean equipment. Initial enquiries have confirmed that the funding can be used to employ additional staff to operate gum removal equipment. As part of the grant application process, the application must have committee approval and state the name of a Councillor Champion.”
DUP Councillor Janice MacArthur, Chair of the Environment Committee, was chosen as the Gum Champion of Ards and North Down Council.
DUP Councillor Alistair Cathcart told the committee: “It’s quite obvious to welcome additional funding to the council, we always do. But in relation to this particular fund, I do think the onus should be on the producers of chewing gum to tackle the problems relating to it, and it is welcome that there is some funding from them to tackle this.
"There should also be some sort of tax or levy on them, rather than pinning it all on to councils. I am interested to see what the member Champion has to do.”
In the application for funding councils have to prove with photos their gum staining problems, what the grant will exactly be used for, and explain what social, economic, and environmental benefits will result from the grant award.
Councils also have to explain the “value for money processes” that will be used to spend the grant and the “sustainability, legacy and comms channels” after the project has ended.
Councils will be given three months for the cleansing, and will have to commit to installing prevention signage within three days following cleansing. They have to provide before-and-after time-stamped photos of all sites cleaned and a report on cleansing at the end of the time period.
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