Litter nuisance faces a sticky end with biodegradable gum

03 April 2009

Local authorities have welcomed the arrival of biodegradable chewing gum on UK supermarket shelves.

A Mexican consortium of gum farmers – known as Consorcio Chiclero – has developed the Chicza Rainforest Gum, which is now on sale at Waitrose. This gum does not stick to clothes or pavements, and will crumble to dust within six weeks of being disposed of.

Westminster City Council currently spends £100,000 a year cleaning chewing gum litter from its streets. It says that 300,000 pieces are dropped annually on Oxford Street alone.

Cllr Danny Chalkley, cabinet member for environment and leisure at the council, said: ‘While we haven’t yet tried to clean this new product off our streets, we certainly welcome the idea of biodegradable gum.

‘Gum litter is a constant problem for us, especially given the vast number of visitors to Westminster every day. We spend £100,000 a year cleaning ugly blobs of conventional chewing gum off our streets, and we estimate it would cost around £9M to carry out a comprehensive deep clean. It’s an incredibly expensive and time-consuming task, so anything that could reduce the problem is very welcome indeed.’

A spokesman for the Keep Britain Tidy campaign said: ‘While we welcome any product that could potentially alleviate the worst problems of staining, the real solution remains for people to put gum in the bin or – if there isn’t one around – in a piece of paper or tissue until they find one.’

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