Limerick City Council employs ‘new gum technologies’ to clean up Cruises Street
LIMERICK City Council have teamed up with the Civic Trust and city traders to clean up Cruises Street, with a particular focus on chewing gum.
The council’s environment department recently acquired a new gum removal technology called ‘Gumpak’ which dissolves chewing gum using environmentally friendly techniques.
Paul Foley, Senior Executive Officer with Limerick City Council, explained that the technology is more cost-effective than previous machines which were hired to do a similar job.
“The objective is to improve the street scape and street surface on Cruises Street, particularly focusing on the removal of chewing gum,” he explained.
“We are engaging new technologies which are different to the machines we used before, effectively dissolving the gum into mini granules which are then brushed away,” he added.
A small hand held ‘lance’ with a 12 volt pump and backpack releases an environmentally friendly sugar based product that dissolves the gum, with the street to be subsequently steam cleaned. The whole process should take about six weeks.
“There is so much gum there at the moment that it should be noticeable when it is all removed,” explained Mr Foley.
“We are looking at some other gum initiatives as well for Cruises Street and we hope to roll this out to other streets once we get to grips with it here first.”
Mayor of Limerick Cllr Jim Long joined representatives of the City Centre Tidy Towns Group, Henry Street Gardai, Cruises Street traders and the Chamber of Commerce to launch the new initiative.
“We are very hopeful that this new technology will be of significant help to us in addressing the problem of chewing gum on the city’s streets,” said the mayor.
Limerick Civic Trust are to provide the manpower for the new cleaning initiative, which is hoped will aid the city centre’s bid in the upcoming Tidy Towns competition.
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Wednesday 23 May 2012
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Comments
There are 4 comments to this article
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Smyrnian
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 01:07 PMGood to tackle the problem; better to tackle the cause. They should look to how Singapore solved that problem.
Victor Mildrew
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 01:53 PMOnly Limerick CC could consider this as a technological breakthrough!! That picture is cringe worthy. Perhaps if the piebalds wandering the streets were taught in school that spiting or public regurgitation is a sign of slovenliness and an indication of their low IQ, we might not need these yokes. It is really embarrassing to see groups of young girls especially, spiting like western cowboys chewing tobacco.
LaurenZwiebel
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 12:02 PMGum removing is major problem, Every Cities Mayor must serious like Mayor of Limerick Cllr Jim Long. ‘Gumpak’ technique is good, But use some big machines like http:www.chewingumremovalequipment.com These are nice steam machines for dissolving gum.
Chuckyd
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 02:28 PMIf people were to demonstrate a little civic pride and hygeine by disposing of gum in bins, this would not be necessary. The same with the dog pooh that all over footpaths in the suburbs.
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