The Irish government’s proposal to slap a ten-cent tax on chewing gum to pay for street cleaning is not just bad news for manufacturers in Ireland. If successful, the initiative might encourage governments around the world to adopt similar schemes. Patrick McGuigan gauges industry reaction and looks at other solutions to the problem.
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While cola cans and crisp packets can simply be swept up, chewing gum, by its very nature, presents a stickier challenge. Local government authorities around the world spend millions on expensive cleaning processes to remove tenacious wads of gum from their city streets. And as gum consumption rises, so does the pressure for an answer to the problem. This cleaning conundrum is at the heart of the recent proposal in Ireland to tax gum by up to ten cents, which would then pay for clean-up costs.
But it’s not just Ireland that is concerned about gum residue. In the UK, local authorities are pushing central government to take action. BBC reports suggest that the UK spends around £150m (US$250.9m) per year cleaning gum from its streets, with Glasgow city council, for example, spending £200,000 last year alone.
In China, where military policemen have been on all fours scraping gum from Tiananmen Square, the government has invested €120,000 (US$139,900) in research to develop a strong enough chemical to effectively remove gum from its streets. And in Singapore, chewing gum has been banned since 1991, although this was recently relaxed slightly to allow its sale for medical reasons.
Calls for education, not taxation
It’s a similar story in other countries around the world, such as Australia and the US. Not surprisingly, chewing gum manufacturers are reluctant to foot the bill run up by irresponsible members of the public. Wrigley is absolutely opposed to the tax in Ireland. “The issue of residue is a big problem, but it’s an issue of educating people rather than taxing,” says spokeswoman Serena Nicholls. “We would support fining people who drop chewing gum on the streets, but it is grossly unfair to tax the majority because of the irresponsible actions of a minority.
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By GlobalData“The proposed tax is not going to meet the clean-up costs in Ireland anyway,” she continues. “There is also evidence that people may drop more if they think they’ve paid a tax for it to be cleaned up.” Wrigley has launched litter education campaigns in Irish schools and with groups like the girl guides, she adds.
At Ireland’s largest bubblegum manufacturer Zed Candy, marketing director Donal Kavanagh is extremely concerned about the proposal. “What’s unfair about it is that the government seems to be proposing a value tax. It’s not so bad for Wrigley – ten cents on a 50-cent packet of gum is manageable. But we have products that cost as little as 10 cents; we even have gum for two cents. Adding 10 cents onto a two-cent piece of gum means people just won’t buy it,” he says.
Proposed policy unclear
“It’s bizarre, but we can’t get clarification from the government on whether this is the case. Every week the politicians come out with one policy or another, but it’s just to get their faces in the paper. Then it’s up to the people in the background to put this into some sort of system, but they don’t have a clue either.”
Kavanagh says that Zed has lobbied the government, along with Wrigley, to abandon the idea altogether or at least make the levy percentage-based rather than a set value. “If they do go through with it, we’ll have no choice but to pass the extra cost on to the consumer and that will definitely harm sales,” he adds.
Like its Irish counterpart, the UK government is looking into ways to combat the unsightly and expensive problem of gum welded to its cities’ streets. A similar tax has been called for by local councils and a discussion paper launched last year raised the idea of banning the sale of gum in areas with a litter problem or near to schools. Heavy fines for those who drop gum have also been suggested.
Consumer behaviour needs to change
Sue Nelson, marketing director for the Keep Britain Tidy campaign, says that neither a tax nor a ban is practical. “In Ireland they already have a tax mechanism for plastic bags, which could be extended to chewing gum” she says. “But in the UK it would mean asking every small shopkeeper to take in the money, with all the right paperwork, send it to the treasury, which would then have to set up a body to redistribute it. This would be incredibly difficult to do and extremely bureaucratic, and the government isn’t keen to burden small businesses with extra paper work.”
She also dismisses the idea of a voluntary ban by shopkeepers in areas with a litter problem, as chewing gum is a high margin product. “There has to be a change in consumer behaviour; anything else is coming at it from the wrong end,” she says.
At present, this may be the best solution, but if a cheaper cleaning process could be invented or manufacturers could devise a biodegradable gum, then all talk of taxes, bans and fines would soon dissipate. There are a wide range of cleaning alternatives that local authorities can currently choose from including scraping, power washing, freezing, sand blasting and laser burning. All these methods have their drawbacks such as damaging paving stones, creating chemical waste or using large amounts of water. But even more importantly, they are all expensive – while gum is so rigidly stuck to the streets it will need specialist cleaning, which is costly.
Biodegradable gum still a long way off
Biodegradable gum, on the other hand, would negate this problem as it would be washed away by rain or cleaned by traditional methods. All the major gum base suppliers and chewing gum manufacturers are working on biodegradable alternatives. Back at Wrigley, Serena Nicholls says that the company has spent millions over the years trying to develop a biodegradable product, but to no avail. “We haven’t managed to develop a product that is of sufficient quality or taste,” she says.
At Spanish gum base supplier Cafosa, a spokeswoman says that the company is also working in this area. “There are so many patents pending that we cannot talk about it in detail, but everyone is trying to develop a biodegradable product,” she says.
In the US, Amy Chezem, spokeswoman for the National Association of Chewing Gum Manufacturers, says biodegradable gum is a long way off. “Manufacturers tend to focus on other things such as quality of product,” she says. Like other parts of the world, Chezem says that gum residue is a problem in the US and there has been talk of counter-measures such as taxation. She adds that US gum manufacturers will be watching with interest what happens in Ireland. “Like any industry it is looking for examples and there is a definite interest in what is happening in other countries,” she says.
And if the Irish scheme is successful, would it worry US manufacturers? “Yes, because who knows what is going to come in the future,” she says.
