New campaign targets wet wipes

THE scourge of wet wipes – flushed down the toilet, only to then potentially become pollution – has been highlighted in a campaign to ban wipes with plastics in them.

The campaign, Nature Calls, has been launched by statutory water and sewerage organisation, Scottish Water. It has already received backing by environment charity, the Marine Conservation Society.

Says Scottish Water, here: “Every year, our teams deal with around 36,000 blockages at a cost to customers of £7 million annually and around 80 per cent of the blockages we attend feature wipes.”

It is urging people to bin their wipes instead of flushing them down the toilet.

Adds the MCS, here: “We‘ve been monitoring and cleaning Cramond beach [to the west of Edinburgh city centre] for over 20 years. In the last five years alone, volunteers have recorded over 30,000 wet wipes from just this 100m stretch of beach.”

It adds: “During the Great British Beach Clean 2021, volunteers found an average of 25 wet wipes per 100m of beach surveyed in Scotland.”

Picture credit: Place Design Scotland