Project tackles chewing gum litter

A TOTAL of €6 million is to be spent educating people about the scourge of chewing gum litter but the Government has stopped short of imposing a clean-up tax on its manufacturers.

As part of the three-year anti-gum litter campaign Irish third-level institutions have been given the chance to compete for a e1m research grant to invent a chewing gum that keeps its taste but loses its stickiness.

Yesterday, three pilot projects were launched in Bray, Dublin and Cork by the newly established Gum Litter Task Force.

They will involve greater enforcement of litter laws, education in schools and will run in tandem with a public awareness campaign that includes on-packet warnings and advertisements in shops.

Speaking after the launch of the Cork project, Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Batt O’Keefe, said a direct levy on chewing gum would have been impractical.

Mr O’Keefe said: “When we looked at the levy, one of the things that came up was that it would be like taxing the customer and taxing the individual rather than industry.”

There has been criticism that the GLT stopped short of an all-out tax on gum.

However, chairman of the GLT and IBEC spokesman Paul Kelly said: “This campaign is radical in tackling this form of litter in a concerted and systematic way with Government and industry working together to change attitudes.”