YOU CAN STICK IT Gum firms refuse £60m clean-up plea
CHEWING gum makers are Wrigleying out of calls to help pay the £60million a year bill for scraping the stuff off our pavements.
Cash- strapped town halls have appealed to gum giants to help clean up a mess which “blights virtually every street”.
But industry chiefs say they already spend a f ortune on l i t t er campaigns and programmes aimed at “changing littering behaviour”. A piece of gum costs 3p to buy but around £1.50 to clean up.
More than 28 million people chew gum across the land. The average person has 125 pieces a year.
Councils say confectioners must go “further and faster” to help with street cleaning. And the Local Government Association wants makers to switch to biodegradable gums which are easier to clean.
Spokesman Martin Tett said: “We are keen to work with the industry to solve a problem blighting virtually every street in Britain.
“The sooner manufac- turers act, the better.” The call comes after Keep Britain Tidy found gum on 99 per cent of high streets and 64 per cent of roads and pavements.
Two years ago MPs called for a tax of up to 5p a pack to help pay for the clean-up. Keep Britain Tidy chief Allison Ogden-Newton said: “Gum is the most difficult type of litter and cleaning it up costs £60million a year. We have to change the behaviour of the small minority who think it is OK to drop gum.”
Gum giant Wrigley said: “Wrigley spends hundreds of thousands of pounds in the UK each year and is one of, if not the, largest contributors to litter prevention initiatives.”