The art of addressing graffiti

WHILE SOME people might view graffiti as art, and despite artists like Banksy somewhat cleaning street art’s image, it is illegal in the eyes of the law. 

Graffiti affects poorer areas the most because removal costs more than some might think. It’s not a simple matter of scrubbing with a household washing up brush and a wad of soap. It requires specialist cleaning services. Network Rail claims that it spends about £750,000 every year to prevent and remove graffiti in Britain. One local London authority, Croydon Council, launched a £500,000 campaign to remove graffiti within its boundaries in October.

Graffiti might seem like an old problem that people have come to accept. But graffiti remains a divisive topic for many today. While campaigning ahead of the Conservative Party leadership election in July, current prime minister Rishi Sunak even made special note of its removal among his proposed policies. Sunak said he would allow local authorities to double the fine for graffiti and lower the damage threshold for courts to imprison offenders.

Even with harsher punishments, graffiti will continue to be a public nuisance. It is quick and easy to apply by people who can escape without notice. Police are often involved in a ‘cat and mouse’ chase, which saps previous resources that are most often directed towards more serious crimes. Post-application removal is often confused because of the patchwork of different authorities that makes it difficult to know who’s responsible.

The cost of the crime

These problems leave many involved in the issue feeling demotivated. “Why bother?" they ask. But graffiti is a problem worth addressing for many reasons.

Illegal street art can seriously damage the public image of a building or structure, as well as the area it’s in. Areas with lots of graffiti become, over time, less desirable than cleaner areas, which drives the cost of housing in those areas down. When launching his area’s new graffiti-removal campaign, Croydon’s mayor referred to this effect:

“Graffiti gives the wrong impression of Croydon as a place where we do not care about our streets and local areas,” he said. “As Croydonians, we know that this is absolutely not the case and graffiti cannot continue to affect the quality of life across our neighbourhoods.”

Graffiti’s appearance on public property like train stations, bridges, pathways, and other public buildings can even turn people away from using these services. Graffiti on a library, for example, might deter people from entering. For private property, like shop fronts and restaurants, graffiti can have the same effect. Potential customers may avoid certain establishments if their façades are covered in graffiti.

The presence of graffiti can also attract more vandalism. Once one tag appears, others often follow. It can also encourage other forms of vandalism and crime when people realise that the problem has not been addressed. Criminals might see graffiti and assume that they can also get away with vandalising that area if nothing is done about it.

This association between graffiti and crime can make people living in and using those areas feel unsafe and uncomfortable. That’s in part because graffiti is often offensive and, as one government publication highlights, frequently involved in hate crimes. The public often argues that it should be able to feel safe in such places.

The barriers to removal

If prevention proves almost impossible, it seems that the only way to deal with graffiti is to do so after it has been applied to a surface. This, in itself, can more often than not prove a difficult task to complete.

One of the barriers preventing the removal of graffiti is financial budget. Graffiti removal is often perceived as non-essential. The negative effects of graffiti are difficult to track and measure, unlike other crimes that directly affect people’s security. This means that, when budgets are tight, graffiti removal moves down the list of priorities. This is especially true for public infrastructure like the rail network. Public bodies must adhere to the government’s expenditure principles that prioritise spending on ‘critical matters’ first. Critical, in this sense, refers to those problems that directly affect operations.

This policy itself increases the cost of removal because paint becomes more and more difficult to remove the longer it has been on a surface. Bricks in buildings, for example, are porous. Their pores suck paint into the structure over time. Chemical strippers that require lots of time and hard manual labour to apply are then needed to remove the graffiti. Getting rid of it within 48 hours of application is ideal.

Beyond cost, graffiti can also cause practical problems. A train that needs to go through a graffiti-removal service might need to remain out of service for an extended period of time. This could cause train delays, and even cancellations. Graffiti removal services in tunnels and on bridges can do the same thing on motorways too.

To clean or to paint?

As a result of these barriers, here at REACT, we’ve noticed a significant shift away from traditional methods of treatment. Many of our clients have stopped asking us to remove graffiti, and requesting paint-over services with graffiti-proof paint instead. These services were unheard of a few years ago. Now, about half of all our graffiti-related cleaning requests require graffiti-proof paint.

The progress of graffiti-proof paints is one of the reasons this is happening. Graffiti often appears in specific easy-to-access spots over and over again. Network Rail even started planting trees in a desperate attempt to deter taggers in Bermondsey this summer. One of the organisation’s regional directors told BBC News: "We respond to reports of any offensive graffiti as soon as possible, even when cleaning graffiti diverts valuable resources away from improving the railway. But we often find graffiti is back as soon as we clear it."

Graffiti-proof paints can make it a lot easier to remove graffiti from a surface - by up to 80% in some cases. That makes removal a lot easier in the long term. For both indoor and outdoor surfaces, non-stick, non-mark paints and coatings such as fluoro carbonates often work well. For outdoor furniture, signs, and walls, fibreglass and porcelain coatings work best. Some people even glaze vulnerable surfaces and objects with plastic laminates.

These solutions are, nevertheless, imperfect. While they make the removal process easier, these chemical coatings can also damage the surfaces they’re applied to. A graffiti-proof paint can prevent wood from breathing, for example, which might cause the object to rot.

Cost is of course one reason why this change is happening. Cleaning can take a lot longer than a paint-over job, and the current economic situation is forcing organisations to cut their budgets for cleaning services. There’s also an aesthetic sacrifice. It’s sometimes difficult to find a graffiti-proof paint that matches the colour of a structure’s original paint. This can affect the building’s intended design.

As the economic austerity continues, we’ll see more people turning to graffiti-proof paint services. They’re cheaper than cleaning services. And organisations often want offensive graffiti dealt with as quickly and at as little cost as possible, no matter the aesthetic value of the building.

Considering the environment

For those organisations that still require the complete removal of graffiti, methods are changing too. This year saw a rapidly rising demand for more ecological approaches to graffiti removal. Almost all of the organisations that REACT works with now demand this as part of our service. This is in large part due to the shifting public perception, since no regulation exists to require the use of such substances.

Responding to these requests has become a lot easier. Traditional cleaning agents, like hydrochloric acid or butyrolactone, can often harm the environment when applied improperly. They can also harm the lungs, eyes, and skin of the operative who is using them, which affects overall working conditions. Despite these facts, many cleaning companies continue to use them because they remain effective.

New ‘environmentally friendly’ products are changing that now. These products used to be ineffective, but a surge of market demand has fuelled innovation. There now exist several products that can produce the same results as traditional cleaning substances. For the moment, these products are typically more expensive than traditional options. But it’s important that cleaning specialists invest in them to meet client demands.

It’s clear that organisations will continue to demand more ecological services in the future. As this recession continues, they’ll also seek cheaper services appropriate to their shrinking budgets. Looking further ahead, and as the economic austerity continues, we believe that people will focus their money and effort on offensive graffiti. Other illegal street art will sadly proliferate.