Chewing gum campaign
What is the Chewing gum campaign?
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea have been awarded funding to run an advertising campaign, in an attempt to reduce littering from chewing gum. The campaign will run from 6 July for approx five weeks. Residents throughout the borough will notice advertising in bus shelters and phone boxes thanking people for binning their gum correctly.
The funding has come from The Chewing Gum Action Group (CGAG). CGAG was formed in Autumn 2003 and brought together:
- Chewing gum manufacturers
- Local Government Association
- Chartered Institution of Wastes Management
- Environmental Campaigns (ENCAMS)
- Department for Education and Skills (DfES)
- Improvement and Development Agency
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
The aim of the advertising campaign is to:
- Raise awareness of the problem of chewing gum litter
- Encourage responsible disposal of gum
- Educate people that dropping gum is littering and that those who drop gum on the floor can be fined up to £75
What are the Council doing to support the advertising?
The Council have produced Gum Wraps - available free of charge from shops and newsagents in Kensington High Street. Please see Where can I get a Gum Wrap? for a list of participating stores.
Gum wraps are slips of recycled paper that you place your gum into when you're done with it. So, if you are on the tube, or on the bus, or there's no bin nearby you can keep your gum on your person, safely wrapped in the gum wrap, until you find a bin.
On 11 July 2006, lots of activities will be happening in Kensington High Street to reinforce that gum littering will not be tolerated. These are:
- Children from Middle Row Primary School are coming to see how the street cleaner removes gum from the pavements
- There will be two mock money sites on Kensington High Street – a hard hitting way of letting people know about the fine amount
- Enforcement officers will be giving away gum wraps at High Street Kensington tube station
What is the fine for dropping gum?
If an Enforcement Officer sees you littering the pavements or highway with gum (or cigarette butts), you can be fined £75.
Why should I care about not dropping gum?
- You will get fined £75 if you are caught dropping gum
- Discarded gum is unhygienic and un-slightly
- It costs approx 3p for a piece of chewing gum, but 10p per piece to clean it off the street
- The Royal Borough currently spends around £135,000 steam cleaning the pavements of gum each year
- The money used to clean gum off our streets could be used to benefit everyone in better parks and other services we can all use
Where can I get a Gum Wrap?
The Royal Borough would like to say a big thank you to the following organisations for assisting the gum campaign by providing gum wraps free of charge in their stores:
- Boots
- McDonalds
- Blacks
- Ellis Brigham
- Urban Outfitters
- Easy Internet
- The Goat Tavern
- The Princess Victoria
- Crispin's newsagents
- Food and Wine newsagents
- The Food Corner newsagents
- Le Monde Café
Did you know?
- 20 million people in the UK use chewing gum each year
- In the UK, we can get through more than 935 million packs of chewing gum each year. Most of this is discarded on the streets and roads of the UK
- Discarded gum can be dangerous for wild animals and pets. It gets caught in feathers and fur and when swallowed can lead to suffocation
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