Liverpool City Council has successfully obtained a £27,500 grant from the Chewing Gum Task Force, administered by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, to help clean up gum and reduce gum littering.
The council is one of 50 across the country that have successfully applied to the Chewing Gum Task Force, now in its fifth year, for funds to clean gum off pavements and prevent it from being littered in the first place.
Liverpool has now received chewing gum funding for four consecutive years, totalling more than £100,000 to support clean‑up efforts across the city.
So far, the grants have enabled the Council to invest in specialist machinery and dedicated staff to remove gum from streets, with particular attention given to residential neighbourhoods and high-profile areas of the city.
This latest award will allow the team to continue work within these areas and to step up engagement with residents and visitors about the impact of gum litter.
The Chewing Gum Task Force grant scheme – established by Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and run by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy – is open to councils across the UK who wish to clean up gum in their local areas and invest in long-term behaviour change to prevent it from being dropped in the first place.
The Task Force is funded by major gum manufacturers including Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle, with an investment of up to £10 million spread over five years.
In the past four years, the Task Force has awarded grants worth a total of £6.46 million, funded the cleaning of over 4.15 million square metres of pavements.
Monitoring and evaluation carried out by Behaviour Change – a not-for-profit social enterprise – has shown that in areas that benefitted from funding, a reduced rate of gum littering of up to 86 per cent was seen in the first two months.
Reductions were still being observed six months after targeted street cleansing and the installation of specially designed signage to encourage people to bin their gum.
