Fermoy Tidy Towns help launch county campaign to ‘bin your gum when its done’
EDUCATION is the key to changing people’s behaviour when it comes to how they dispose of their chewing gum.
That’s was the simple but unequivocal message to emerge from a gathering in Fermoy this week, part of a county-wide campaign encouraging people to “bin your gum when its done.”
The event, marking the Cork launch of the 2017 Gum Litter Taskforce (GLT) education campaign, saw children and teachers from local schools, public representatives including county mayor Seamus McGrath, members of Fermoy Tidy Towns and the public come together to ‘get on message’.
Speaking at the launch Cllr Noel McCarthy, chair of Fermoy Tidy Towns, said that it costs Cork County Council huge amounts of money each year to clean up chewing gum stuck to pavements.
“It is also hugely disappointing for groups like us, who do an immense amount of work to keep our towns and villages free of litter, to see our pavements covered in discarded chewing gum,” said Cllr McCarthy.
“This is a great campaign for communities up and down the country to get involved in, uniting people in a common goal to responsibly dispose of their chewing gum,” he added.
Cllr McCarthy said he was particularly pleased to see so many young people at the launch.
“It is important that people get into the habit of disposing gum properly from a young age so they can take that through their lives and pass the message onto others,” he said.
That is a message that, according to GLT chairman Paul Kelly, is reaching the public through the education campaign.
He pointed to research undertaken on behalf of the taskforce during last year’s campaign that showed the highest number of people to date (93%) agree that dropping gum is littering and 84% of those surveyed claiming that they always dispose of their gum properly.
“Since the campaign started in 2014 we have seen very positive results and want to keeping encouraging the small minority of people who do not dispose of their gum properly to think about it and bin it,” said Mr Kelly.
For more information a visit www.gumlittertaskforce.ie.