I never thought a chewing gum wrapper would teach me a lesson that still matters today

In my primary school, I clearly remember the lesson about ‘not dropping litter’ and the pixilated graphic of the person putting litter in the litter bin on the side of my Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum wrapper, which was my go-to sugar laden favourite.

Seems simple enough; put your litter and your gum into a bin.

This graphic / logo is now synonymous with Keep Britain Tidy, a national organisation famous for its numerous nationwide advertising campaigns to encourage us all to ‘love where we live’.

The duck on the bus commercial is a recent example. The duck follows a man home who dropped his cigarette butt and the duck is upset with his actions and follows him to haunt him.

This is an amusing and a relevant reminder that cigarette butts are rubbish too, and to keep our streets clean and take responsibility.

As millions of pounds is spent reminding the population not to drop litter and millions of pounds is then spent on collecting litter that has not been disposed of properly from a small number of people that failed to get the reminder, it then becomes a false and wasteful economy of campaigns and actions, actions and campaigns.

Back to my 1970s PHSE lesson - a cigarette butt takes five years to decompose we were taught, chewing gum is oily and is not pleasant when stuck to the tarmac, your shoe or your parents’ hall carpet.

The message was simple - put it in the bins provided or take it home and if you did drop your litter at school, one was despatched with a black bin bag in your breaktime to litter pick the school playing field; an earlier version of restorative justice or community payback.

It seemed to work for the brown jumper wearing tank top children of this generation.

Earlier in this month the editor of the Yorkshire Evening Post drew our attention to the latest Keep Britain Tidy campaign ‘Bin Your Gum’, backed by £1m worth of investments into keeping UK high streets gum free.

Here in Leeds, the statutory authorities have benefited from this grant money to help remove gum and reduce gum littering, and have cleaned up hot spot areas which is great to see.

Leeds residents are proud of the city, and most do love where they live, creating a pride in the places where we all work and live - particularly in our beloved city centre.

Businesses are doing their part too through LeedsBID, the business improvement district which invests nearly £0.5m a year of private money, cleaning the streets and removing oily chewing gum, responding to the ambition to have a clean, ‘gum free city centre’ to be enjoyed by customers, residents and businesses alike.

So as Leeds continues to celebrate its 400 th Birthday and Trivial Pursuit Leeds takes over the city this summer, let us all ‘Keep Leeds Tidy’ and support the ‘Bin Your Gum’ campaign.