Chew on this! Gum gives me the ick

Chewing gum is a pet hate of mine. I hate watching people chew it, I hate the noise it makes, and I hate that our pavements are absolutely covered in disgusting sticky remnants of spat-out blobs.

So, I felt vindicated – if not a little shocked – to read it costs the taxpayer £1.50 to clean up each square metre of pavement, with councils spending an estimated £60 million a year removing gum.

In contrast, each piece only costs around 3p to buy.

A new initiative has been launched which will see an army of chewing gum removal squads take to the streets to clean up the mess, with £10m set aside for the job. The money has been pledged by manufacturers and will also be used to educate the public about the importance of putting gum in a bin. To be honest I’d rather we go the same way as Singapore and take the gum off shelves.