Edinburgh streets: Council plans blitz on discarded chewing gum on city's streets and pavements

The city council has been awarded a grant to help remove the gum and promote a public education campaign to stop people throwing their old chewing gum on the ground.

Transport and environment convener Stephen Jenkinson said: "This grant is very welcome as gum takes about five years to break down and is costly to remove. Our task force is starting in busy areas and in the next couple of weeks we are concentrating on removing discarded gum on Leith Street.

The chewing gum task force is about to launch a blitz on the city's streets and pavements | supplied

“It’s important that we get the message out that it is not OK to drop gum in our beautiful city and we’re putting up effective signage to try to prevent littering in the future. I’d like to ask all of our residents and visitors to support this campaign and please bin your gum."

The £25,000 grant is from a UK Government chewing gum task force grant scheme established by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and run by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy. vEdinburgh is one of 54 councils across the country that has successfully applied to the scheme, which is now in its third year.

Estimates suggest the annual clean-up cost of chewing gum for councils in the UK is around £7 million. In its second year the scheme awarded 55 councils a total of £1.56 million, helping clean an estimated 440,000 square metres of pavement - an area equivalent to the Vatican City.

By combining targeted street cleaning with specially designed signage to encourage people to bin their gum, participating councils achieved reductions in gum littering of up to 60 per cent in the first two months.

Allison Ogden-Newton, Keep Britain Tidy’s chief executive, said: “Chewing gum litter is highly visible on our high streets and is both difficult and expensive to clean up, so the support for councils provided by the chewing gum task force and the gum manufacturers is very welcome.

“However, once the gum has been cleaned up, it is vital to remind the public that when it comes to litter, whether it’s gum or anything else, there is only one place it should be – in the bin – and that is why the behaviour change element of the task force’s work is so important.”