Smartbins awareness and enforcement campaign
Released: 8 February 2008
A new information and enforcement campaign around the use of the city centre’s Smartbins - installed last autumn specifically for the disposal of chewing gum and cigarette butts - has enlisted the help of a larger than life character to get the message across.
“Cyril the Ciggie” joined Wolverhampton City Council Cabinet Member for the Environment, Councillor Pat Byrne, today to stress the ‘stub it out safely and dispose of it sensibly’ message to cigarette smokers and gum chewers.
“Chewing gum can be an ugly problem, not just in terms of litter but also stained shoes and clothing, and is expensive and time consuming to clear up from our streets,” said Councillor Byrne.
”I hope this latest campaign will build on work already undertaken to tackle the blight that thoughtlessly discarded chewing gum can create - and raise awareness in people of their responsibility in disposing of it appropriately.
“Dropping litter, including cigarettes and chewing gum, is an offence punishable by a £60 fine. The Smartbins are a safe and easy way of disposing both of cigarettes and chewing gum and I would encourage everyone to use them.
“In Wolverhampton we spend £40,000 a year on combating the problems caused by chewing gum, including the cost of gum removal and subsequent deep cleansing.”
There are 23 Smartbins in the city centre sited on lamp posts in Dudley Street, Queen Street and Woolpack Alley. There are also five in the vicinity of the Civic Centre.
Environmental Information Officers, together with their enforcement colleagues, stopped shoppers to give away pocket information cards encouraging people to use the Smartbins, reminding them that dropping litter could result in a £60 fine, and providing information on the cost of gum removal and street cleansing in Wolverhampton.
Following the success of previous deep cleansing carried out on pedestrian areas - where chewing gum and grime is removed using specialist industrial equipment - a programme of work is currently being prepared for this spring which will be completed, weather permitting, before the end of March 2008.
The cleansing operation will primarily be carried out between the hours of 6pm and 6am Monday to Thursday in order to minimise the disruption to shop-keepers and members of the public.
Areas designated for the deep cleansing works include proposed sites throughout Wolverhampton City Centre, plus Tettenhall High Street, Wednesfield and Bilston Town Centres.
Additional information
- Each piece of chewing gum costs about three pence to buy but 10 pence to clean up.
- Every year in the UK 3.5 billion pieces of gum are disposed of and nine out of 10 city paving stones have had gum stuck to them.
- Cigarette butts and chewing gum are the two most littered items on streets in the UK, with 40 per cent of litter on the streets being cigarette ends.
- A cigarette butt contains up to 4,000 chemicals and takes 12 years to biodegrade.
Issued by the press office.