The Westminster Gumbusting Campaign

Costing UK local authorities nearly £150 million per year, cleansing streets of gum is a massive, increasing problem.  

Gum sticks to people's clothes and shoes, stains the street and stays there - for years. London's streets are subject to a daily barrage of gum with on Oxford Street alone 300,000 pieces dropped per day. The gum cleansing effort is like painting the Forth Bridge - a never-ending effort.

As part of its wider Clean Streets programme, we're calling for a revision of the proposed litter fine solution and for the gum industry to help deal with the problem.

Westminster's Cabinet Member for Street Environment, Alan Bradley comments: "What we need is a fund to help with the massive clean up and a national advertising campaign to educate people to dispose of their gum responsibly."

The Council is calling for Wrigley - who make 90% of the chewing gum sold and chewed by over 28 million people in the UK - to add 1p to every pack of gum sold:

"Wrigley and reaps the profits of a remarkable growth industry and should be held accountable for the environmental impact of their product. For a start they need to better use their packs and point of sale to encourage responsible behaviour by their consumers, but ultimately they need to contribute to the enormous clean up bill."

UK Gum Summit 2005

The Capital Cities of the UK and Ireland have joined forces in the battle against the scourge of discarded chewing gum.

In the first summit of its kind, representatives from Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin and Edinburgh met with Westminster City Council - representing London - to plan a campaign to press the UK's leading gum manufacturer, Wrigley, to take action on this issue.

Cllr Alan Bradley, Cabinet Member for Street Environment at Westminster Council, said: "We have persistently asked for help from both Wrigley and the law-makers on this issue but have consistently been disappointed by the response. Gum manufacturers have been promising for years that they are working on an environmentally-friendly gum, but nothing has happened.

"That is why we, the capital cities of Great Britain and Ireland, have now joined forces. Today, we are declaring war on this blight to our cities and we believe that by working together, we considerably more difficult to ignore."