I remember when I used to live in Glasgow, and George Square was a square of grey tarmac, with every inch covered in chewing gum of various shade of grey. Then the Council re-tarmaced it, and it had a lovely gleaming pale pink surface... for all of 2 days. The blobs of chewing gum were soon reappearing.
It costs a fortune to steam clean the pavements of chewing gum - Glasgow spends £200k per year, and apparently £150m is spent each year cleaning up chewing gum in the UK. This compares with £271m being spent on chewing gum purchases each year.
So a tax of about 55% would cover the current cleaning bill. Clearly though, there are places, like Thurso, where there is no clean-up. Therefore I reckon that if chewing gum is taxed at, say, 400 or 500%, there may be enough money to go round to clean up more places.
And this level of tax might finally persuade the chewing gum manufacturers to develop a non-stick chewing gum which can simply be swept up.
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