Irish Chew Over Gum Mess Levy

The Irish government plans to clean up its streets with a tax on chewing gum, polystyrene burger cartons and cash machine receipts.

The new levy, which will add 5-10 cents (3-7p) to the price of a packet of gum, could save the public purse up to €8m (£5.6m) a year and will help fund gum-buster machines to remove an unsightly mosaic of grey blobs from pavements.

There will be similar tariffs on non-biodegradable fast food packaging to encourage burger chains to switch to recyclable wrappers, and on ATM receipts, which could lead to banks and building societies stopping them.

Martin Cullen, the environment minister, hopes the measure, being introduced this autumn, will prove as successful as the plastic bag tax a year ago, which has cut usage by more than 90% since it added 15 euro cents (10p) to the cost of each bag.

The policy is based on the "polluter pays" principle, common in most EU countries, and Mr Cullen said it was a small individual price to fund a multimillion pound clean-up.

But some critics pointed out the new tax would penalise all users of the levied products, regardless of whether they were litter louts.