Council sticking to its guns on gum campaign!

Members of Westmeath County Council joined the Gum Litter Taskforce (GLT) on Friday last in the Market Square, Mullingar to launch an anti-gum campaign for the town, following on from the success of the campaigns of 2007 and last year.The campaign will focus on raising awareness of gum litter in order to educate consumers about the responsible disposal of gum.In five cities nationally monitored during 2008, there was an overall decrease of chewing gum litter of 36% since the beginning of the campaign.Speaking about the programme, Bernie Ginnell, Environmental Awareness Officer for Westmeath County Council said the principal of the campaign is to raise awareness of chewing gum as litter:'It was run as a pilot scheme in 2006 and since then it has been run each year since that and we hope to build on the success of previous years,' commented Bernie.'They"ve carried out studies in Galway, Dublin and Cork and found that gum litter is down by 36% since the first campaign ran,' she continued.'Westmeath County Council have spent a lot of money on paving over the years and it is a shame to see it being ruined by chewing gum,' she said. 'People don"t even realise that chewing gum takes so long to degrade.'