Chew Ya Gonna Call? Meet the gumbusters cleaning up pavements

South Lanarkshire's grounds team are visiting towns including Rutherglen, Blantyre and Lanark to clean up chewing gum.

31st Jul 2024

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South Lanarkshire

Council workers are taking to the streets to clean up discarded chewing gum blighting pavements across South Lanarkshire.

The local authority’s grounds team are visiting towns including Rutherglen, Blantyre and Lanark armed with specialist machines designed to pull up the sticky gum.

South Lanarkshire Council has been given a grant of £27,045 from the UK-wide Chewing Gum Task Force, administered by charity Keep Britain Tidy as part of the ‘It’s Your Place’ campaign.

The grants are funded by major gum manufacturers including Mars Wrigley and Perfetti Van Melle. Other councils across Scotland have also received money including Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow.

Council workers are taking to the streets to clean up discarded chewing gum blighting pavements across South Lanarkshire. STV News

Emma Berry, environmental initiative officer at South Lanarkshire Council, said: “It’s a detergent solution…it gets heated up to between 95 and 100C and the solution breaks down the sticky substance of the chewing gum and removes it off the pavement.”

Councillor Robert Brown added: “It’s a bit like graffiti – if you let it last, it’ll just stay there. People regard it as being graffiti-central, they’ll come back and do it again.

“If the place is nice and tidy, there’s a slight inhibition against dropping your chewing gum on the pavement and hopefully it has a longer-term effect.”