Anger over chewing gum on pavements

The filthy habit of spitting chewing gum out on the pavements is causing upset to the Mullingar councillor who heads up the town’s Tidy Towns effort, Cllr Bill Collentine.

At the December meeting of the Municipal District of Mullingar Kinnegad, Cllr Collentine called on the district to clean the chewing gum off the paths.

The written response to his proposal stated that the district power-washes the footpaths in Mullingar on an annual basis, and the removal of chewing gum is part of that.

Cllr Collentine was “half happy” with the answer, declaring that while the cleaning is once a year, and there appears not to be as much chewing gum as in the past, it remains a problem.

He wondered if the council should look at purchasing a machine specifically for removing gum.

Alternatively, he suggested, the squares in the town, which is where the problem is at its worst, could be power-washed more than once a year.

“It’s not going to go away altogether because people will continue to throw the bubblegum on the ground, so we’re not going to cure it.

“So maybe we should have a look at doing it more often, and maybe we’d get rid of some of the problem,” he said.

Cllr Emily Wallace said she had noticed there was an unbelievable amount of bubblegum on a portion of Pearse Street, and Cllr David Jones said it would be great to see the power-washing extended to paths in smaller towns and villages as well.

Support came also from the mayor, Cllr Ken Glynn.

District engineer, Pat Kavanagh, said: “Chewing gum on footpaths is a national problem – actually, it’s a European problem,” he said.

Mr Kavanagh said that at one stage the council had introduced special bins for chewing gum, but they found people were inclined to put the chewing gum everywhere but in the bin.

While there is a machine that can be used for cleaning chewing gum off pavements, it is slow, and the problem is more evident because the footpaths are cleaned so often now that people can see the extent of the chewing gum problem.

“It’s a huge and costly maintenance issue for us,” he stated, adding that the council will continue to work on the problem. He added that it is their intention to start power-washing in the villages around the county as well.

“In fact, we’ve purchased a lot of power washing equipment now so that we can reduce our costs. And I hope to sort of put a list of villages on and work our way through them,” he said.