Cash spent to clear thoughtlessly discarded chewing gum from Dundee’s pavements could be used instead to plug gaps in vital services, it was suggested yesterday.
New figures have shown that over the past three years Dundee City Council has been forced to spend more than £70,000 to remove the sticky hazard-and the cost is rising every year.
In 2007-08 the clean-up operation cost the council £22,101. That rose to £24,011 in 2008-09 and by 2009-10 the cost stood at £24,458.
Dundee’s environment services convener, Jimmy Black, described the habit of spitting gum out in the street as “absolutely disgusting” and said the money could be put to much better use. We are spending really the equivalent of an extra job each year.”
“We could pay a member of staff in the social work department to do more child protection work, for example, or a classroom assistant, or someone to help to remove graffiti. There are countless numbers of things we could do, all more valuable than picking up chewing gum from people who spit it out on the pavement.”
The gum takes up to five years to degrade and poses an unpleasant obstacle.
“A lot of people don’t notice the chewing gum until they stand in a newly deposited lump and it gets all over their shoes,” said Mr Black. “They then have to spend a very unpleasant half hour trying to clean it off.
“It (spitting out gum) is a very inconsiderate thing to do and not a particularly healthy thing to do because the gum can carry bacteria.”
Hardly a pavement in the city centre is free of gum and the council has tried to take steps to deal with the problem. Special Gummi bins have been provided on lampposts in the city centre for the past two years the problem is persuading people to use them.
Once the gum hardens it becomes difficult to dislodge through standard street cleaning, and can only be removed by labour intensive manual scraping or the use of expensive steam and chemical cleaners.
In fact, though the cost of a piece of gum is just a few pence, it can cost anything up to £2 to clean up.