Bye gum! City's sticky streets set for clean-up

Gum removal backpacks are now being used to remove the sticky litter from hard-to-reach places

More chewing gum will be removed from city streets after a council received thousands of pounds of funding.

Newcastle City Council received £12,500 from the Chewing Gum Task Force, run by the charity Keep Britain Tidy, to remove the sticky waste from pavements.

The money has been used to pay for portable electric chewing gum removal backpacks, which can reach areas bigger machinery can not.

Labour's Marion Williams said she wanted to make sure the city remained "clean, attractive and welcoming".

"No-one likes to see chewing gum stains on our streets and the clean-up of them can be expensive and time-consuming," she said.

The task force was set up by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and funded by gum manufacturers.

Removing the waste from pavements costs councils about £7m a year, according to Keep Britain Tidy.

By combining targeted street cleaning with specially designed signage, councils were able to reduce gum littering by 60% in two months, the charity said.

Allison Ogden-Newton, Keep Britain Tidy’s chief executive, said: "Once the gum has been cleaned up, it is vital to remind the public that when it comes to litter, whether it's gum or anything else, there is only one place it should be – in the bin."