Gum: the opportunity is now
August 1st 2005

In Singapore, you can get a $1000 fine simply for chewing gum in a public place, and to prevent people from doing so, it can only be purchased in pharmacists. This is not because the government there has anything against gum chewing as such; they have enforced this law due to the fact that chewing gum has become one of most offensive non-recoverable items of litter in public places.

In the UK where more than 3 billion packs of gum are bought every year, much of it ending up on our streets, the pollution caused by discarded chewing gum now presents one of the country’s biggest public cleansing problems.

And in light of the failure by leading chewing gum manufacturers to produce a biodegradable version in order to combat the problem, there have been calls for a chewing gum tax to help pay for the clean up and relieve the burden on local authorities.

Local Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw has said: “Irresponsibly discarded gum which sticks to the streets and other areas of public property is a nuisance which costs councils thousands to clean up every year.” Manchester City Council alone spent over £200 000 in 2004 on removing chewing gum but say they ‘barely dented’ the problem. In an effort to rid the city of this eyesore the Council has announced that from June this year enforcement officers would issue £50 fixed penalty notices to people seen dropping gum on Manchester’s pavements.

Working alongside DEFRA, the Local Government Association, the Improvement and Development Agency, the chewing gum industry and ENCAMS, Manchester City Council has been chosen as a lead authority to pilot a national chewing gum awareness initiative in an effort to address this anti-social behaviour.

Over the last few weeks, over 30 000 square metres of city centre streets have been cleaned of chewing gum at a cost of £30 000.

That’s a Pound a square metre.

This cleaned area will be monitored over a four-week period and compared with an area This will give some measure of the extent of chewing gum pollution.

In London, over £4 million a year is spent by Councils and transport companies on trying to control the discarded chewing gum that litters the capital’s streets and street furniture.

London Assembly Liberal Democrat Environment Spokesman, Mike Tuffrey, has been quoted as saying: “Chewing gum is a unique form of litter as it is almost impossible to remove.” We have presented a number of facts here. But what does stick out is that the popularity of chewing gum is enormous and growing, and both local and central government is concerned about its removal. Now, while it is unlikely that the measures that have been adopted in Singapore will become law here, at a Pound a metre its removal from our streets does present a considerable opportunity for those companies in a position to do something about it, because those streets will need to be cleaned of gum time and time again.

OspreyDeepclean’s gum destroying technology utilises high steam temperatures under low pressure, combined with a specially formulated detergent that is automatically injected into the jet of steam as the machine operates. The combination of high temperature and the detergent rapidly destroys the resilience of the gum against delamination from the floor surface and vaporises it. This technology is as equally effective on porous street surfaces, polished marble, and even on walked in gum on carpet and entrance matting, making it the ideal solution for both local authorities as well as high street retail outlets who suffer from the problem.

To make bringing the solution to customers even more convenient, we have now introduced our new Streetcleaner, a highly mobile and independent power and water supply platform that gives you a rapid response means to literally clean up.

How big is the town near you? How many square metres in the local shopping centre? The pedestrian precinct? Outside (and in) commercial buildings such as banks, fast food outlets, cinemas, and in car parks? However large or small these areas, until people change their nature, or until the manufacturers can change the nature of the gum itself, we are going to be stuck with the problem. Pardon the pun. But in the meantime, someone is going to be prepared to pay for removing this blight, and the person they pay might just as well be you.

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