London has finally cleaned up one of its most egregious environmental messes: Wet Wipe Island.
It was a 250-meter-long, one-meter-high landmass of flushed wet wipes. They all fused to form a gigantic, disgusting wad roughly the size of two tennis courts. It’s been slowly clogging up the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge for quite some time now, but it’s officially gone.
It wasn’t just wet wipes. It was towels, pans, scarves, a car engine belt, and even someone’s dentures. Basically, everything you wouldn’t expect or should find in a river. Gross, right?
Over the course of three weeks, the Port of London Authority, Thames Water, and environmental group Thames21 employed a “rake and shake” method using two excavators to separate approximately 114 tonnes of entangled sludge from the actual riverbed.
All that to remove 200 cubic meters of wet wipes made of non-biodegradable plastic from the ecosystem and into 15 massive skips for proper disposal. Grace Rawnsley, sustainability director at the Port of London Authority, summed up the disgusting project: “While at times the work was pretty gross, it was well worth it to help clean the river.”
That Massive Wad of Wet Wipes in the Thames? London Finally Got Rid of It.
The wipes needed to go. They were altering the river’s flow and damaging local aquatic habitats. Thames Water says they yank 3.8 billion wipes from the sewer system every year, at an annual cost of £18 million. It’s like trying to mop up the ocean with a tissue—except the tissue is plastic and you’re the one flushing it.
That’s why it is highly recommended that you refrain from flushing wet wipes. It’s gross seeing a collection of s**t-stained wet wipes in a restaurant’s bathroom garbage bin. Still, it’s better than choking a communal water supply or giving your local septic workers extra work as they clean out gigantic industrial filters choked with wet wipes.
This cleanup marks the UK’s first large-scale removal of wet wipe waste from a river. The government is finally considering a ban on plastic-containing wet wipes, while organizations like Thames21 urge manufacturers to stop producing them altogether.
Again, one more time with the PSA: do not flush your wipes. Toss them in the trash. Your local water supply will appreciate your efforts.
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